Cookies are [only] good!

Website visitors are beginning to understand cookies can serve a positive, practical purpose for both the site owner and visitor but much education still needs to be done from both the industry and consumer perspective, says the Web Analytics Association (WAA).

Educating users is a good thing and the Webanaltyics industry, which is afraid of watered results, is doing a great job. What I miss in this press release is a clear statement about cookies:

1. Cookies are not like worms and viruses and cannot delete anything on a user’s hard drive.
2. Cookies are not a form of spyware in that they can read personal information stored on the user’s computer
3. Cookies don’t generate popups
4. Cookies are not used for spamming
6. Cookies are not only used for advertising

Cookies are in fact only data, not code: they cannot erase or read information from the user’s computer.

Google Analytics open to everybody!

Google Webanalytics is open to everybody! Brett Crosby, Sr. Manager, Google Analytics announced the great news in the Google Webanalytics blog. Now anyone with a website can instantly create one analytics account for free by simply visiting google.com/analytics or by clicking on the “Analytics” tab within AdWords.

Currently the user database of Google Analytics is estimated at about 400.000. This new release opens Google Analytics to everybody and Google finally succeeded in overcoming their inglorious soft launch (with thousands of webanalytics applications pending).

It will be interesting to see how the other vendors react to the free release (without any waiting time). Besides giving everybody the tool for free, Google’s Conversion university and Google’s authorized consultants program seem to get more people interested in webanalytics.

What also will be interesting to see if Google will integrate an innovative radio or print tracking tool.

360-degree view of the customer

A 360-degree view of the customer will take some time and is probably the dream of any marketing director. Andrew Hally, senior director at Unica Corp. wrote a great article about the “history” and “future” of the webanalytics industry.

His article begins with the first steps of webanalytics, which reminded me of my first analytic experience with http-analyze2.42  in 1996:

He then describes the “historical” change from “How many hits to our Web site?” to “How many visitors did we turn to buyers”. Finally he mentions the future of integrated webanalytics tools such as the SAS webanalytics solution.

Overall a great article and a must-read for everybody who is interested in webanalytics!