Hurry up and get Emetrics tickets!

This year’s Emetrics Summit is slated to be the biggest for the five-year-running conference series organized by industry luminary and president of the Web Analytics Association, Jim Sterne.

Registration for the first east coast Emetrics Summit broke all previous year’s records four weeks prior to the event, and the conference series is likely to see its third sold-out event in a row.

Seems like it is going to be a big event. Hopefully I will see some of the blog readers there.

Coremetrics 2007

Coremetrics is launching a comprehensive range of tools which enable organizations to implement more scientific, data-driven and proactive online marketing programs. Coremetrics 2007 builds on Coremetrics’ robust web analytics platform, enabling marketers to turn granular analytical data into clear marketing activity plans instantly.

Coremetrics Online Analytics Enhancements

Coremetrics 2007 adds significant new capabilities for companies in the travel, financial services and content delivery spaces, including:

• Action Ready Reports - an executive-level set of reports available in an automated and easy-to-distribute Microsoft Excel notebook format, viewable on or offline. Action Ready Reports extend the reach of the Coremetrics platform to those without direct access to the Coremetrics interface.

• Conversion Events - a set of reports that track the relative value of potentially thousands of discrete events that represent non-commerce related website goals, such as downloading information, registering for a newsletter or signing up for a gift registry. For example, a media website may value the completion a subscription twice as much as a visitor interacting with a game. The new Conversion Events functionality enables organizations to assess the performance of various content or marketing programs in achieving their goals.

• Dimensions Report – analyzes details surrounding online bookings, enabling travel providers to track information such as the website where the booking originated, the relative success of different brands or geographies, and attributes such as room size or seat classification. The Dimensions Report can also be tailored to meet the ad hoc dimensional reporting needs of other new customers.

SEMDirector and Omniture Join Forces

SEMDirector, Inc., the leading provider of enterprise search analytics software and Omniture (Nasdaq: OMTR – News), a leading provider of online business optimization software, jointly announced today the formation of an alliance to provide a select portfolio of integrated software solutions. Under the terms of this agreement, the two companies will work together to extend the integration between Omniture’s Web analytics products and SEMDirector’s enterprise search analytics solutions.

The integration between these two product suites provides global, distributed organizations with unparalleled visibility, actionable metrics and robust functionality to manage and optimize all facets of search engine marketing across the entire enterprise. As part of this new alliance, SEMDirector also announced its participation in Omniture’s accreditation and certification programs for technology and sales.

Nielsen and Comscore ungergo media rating audits

According to Mark Shields over at Adweek, the Interactive Advertising Bureau is pressuring the two firms to increase their transparency and improve their methodologies—just as both prepare to undergo long-awaited Media Rating Council-led audits.

It’s been a long-standing tradition among Web publishers to occasionally gripe about their numbers. But in the last several months, what was mild grumbling has become a cacophony of complaints, as several top publishers call into question the validity of the traffic data being provided by the industry’s major third-party metrics firms: Nielsen//NetRatings and comScore Media Metrix.
 

Read the entire article at Adweek

Paid Search beats Conversion Rates of Organic Search

Websidestory today announced the results of a new study that shows paid search has only a slight 9 percent edge in conversion rates over organic search. In a study of leading business-to-consumer (B2C) e-commerce sites during the first eight months of this year, paid search — keywords bought on a pay-per-click basis at search engines such as Google, Yahoo and MSN — had a median order conversion rate of 3.40 percent at business-to-consumer e-commerce sites using the company’s award-winning HBX Analytics technology.

Paid v. Organic Search
    Median Order Conversion Rates at Business to Consumer E-Commerce Sites
    Jan.-Aug. 2006

    Marketing Channel                 Conversion Rate
    Paid Search                       3.40%
    Organic Search                    3.13%

Real-Time Identity Proofing

Identity risk management company, ID Analytics, Inc., and VeriSign, Inc., provider of intelligent infrastructure services for Internet and telecommunications networks, have developed an initiative to strengthen identity verification and proofing for online customers.

Under the terms of a Referral Agreement, VeriSign intends to refer ID Analytics solutions to certain customers, including VeriSign Identity Protection (VIP) customers. Using the ID Network and Graph Theoretic Anomaly Detection (GTAD), advanced pattern recognition technology, ID Analytics solutions are designed to allow VIP customers to instantly assess the risk of an identity the first-time a user registers for a new account or attempts to complete any high-value service online.

Interview With Google Analytics

On Thursday Manoj Jasra from Webpronews interviewed Google Analytics’ Senior Manager Brett Crosby.

[Manoj]: Can you start by talking a little bit about your professional background.

[Brett]: When we were acquired by Google I was VP of marketing at Urchin, I was also one of the co-founders of Urchin Software. We had been developing the software for about 10 years prior to that, both software and web based version. Once we were acquired I became the senior manager of Google Analytics.

The entire interview can be found here

Major Las Vegas hotels select WebSideStory’s HBX

The Venetian, one of Las Vegas’ premier luxury resort hotels and casinos, has selected its on-demand web analytics solution, HBX Analytics, to help generate more room reservations and tickets sales via its web site.  

WebSideStory adds to its growing list of travel and entertainment clients, including major hotel chains, airlines, cruise lines and entertainment properties. Last month, WebSideStory announced the signing of another major Las Vegas hotel and casino, the Wynn Las Vegas.

The Venetian, operated by the Las Vegas Sands Corp., decided to upgrade its web analytics solution as part of a major new online initiative designed to improve the customer experience and increase revenue. It selected WebSideStory following an extensive review of several major web analytics vendors. WebSideStory rose to the top of the list for several reasons, including its detailed marketing campaign analysis, multimedia tracking capabilities, and proven customer support, including professional services. Another consideration was WebSideStory’s support for Unicode characters, which enables clients to accurately measure web site usage in European and Asian languages. The Venetian recently opened a sister property in Macau, a territory in southern China, and will soon have a Chinese language web site to support.

Emetrics Summit – One day training event

To help enterprises get the most bang for their buck out of online marketing, the Web Analytics Association (WAA) announced today it is launching an intensive one-day training event on web analytics at the Emetrics Summit.

The WAA Training Day , five consecutive sessions of valuable, practical knowledge in web analytics, will be held Sunday, October 15th to acquaint attendees with best practices in web analytics and to provide guidance on how to apply web analysis to optimize their online marketing investment. It will give attendees a head start on the conference which runs October 16 to 18 at the Sheraton Premiere at Tysons Corner.

The Training Day will feature five consecutive sessions, taught by seasoned web analytics professionals. Sessions begin at 9 AM and run until 4:15 PM. June Li, Founder and Managing Director, ClickInsight, is moderating the full day of training.

Session topics are:

Session 1: “Getting Started with Web Analytics” presented by Alex Langshur, Principal, Hillwatch. It will review the fundamentals of web analytics, including an exploration of the various approaches, an examination of data collection issues, and a discussion on what you need to know to get started.

Session 2: “Ratcheting Up Website User Experience” presented by Braden Hoeppner, Web Analyst, Telus. Participants will learn how to optimize site content structure and usability, to improve the quality of site content in order to increase conversion.

Session 3: “Optimizing Online Campaigns” presented by Andrea Hadley, NetSetGo Marketing; Keira Lorentzen, Digitas, and Terry Cohen, Digitas. They will use a real life case study to examine how to judge whether an online campaign is working or not.

Session 4: “Selecting a Web Analytics Vendor” presented by Jim Humphrys, eBusiness Leader, W.L Gore & Associates. Attendees will learn how Gore, a $2 billion diversified global manufacturer, selected a web analytics tool and implemented web analytics.

Session 5: “Selling, Staffing and Sustaining Web Analytics,” presented by June Li, will examine the long term use of web analytics to drive organizational growth and support data driven decision making.

“Since the formation of the Web Analytics Association (WAA) 2 years ago, the number one need our members have specified is training,” says Bryan Eisenberg, chairman of the WAA Board of Directors. “We are so pleased to have organized the first full day training by the WAA. I am sure our members will find it a tremendous value and of great benefit,” he says.

WebSideStory to Highlight Web 2.0 Capabilities

WebSideStory, Inc. a provider of digital marketing and analytics solutions, has announced that it will highlight its industry leading Web 2.0 capabilities as part of its ActiveInsights user forum Oct. 3-5 at the Crowne Plaza in New York City. WebSideStory CEO Jeff Lunsford, Organic CEO Mark Kingdon and industry leading customers and partners will demonstrate, among other things, how WebSideStory is using these technologies to maximize the performance and capabilities of its own enterprise applications.

Kingdon will deliver the keynote address, entitled “Overcoming Blind Spots: Understanding Engagement Metrics in a Web 2.0 Universe,” focusing on how the advent of AJAX, RSS feeds, Flash, online video and other Web 2.0 technologies are changing the way people interact with the web, and how standard HTML-focused web analytics solutions are creating “blind spots” for marketers. Kingdon will present a case study on how HBX Analytics helped his interactive marketing firm overcome these obstacles, including tracking and optimizing an AJAX and RSS-intensive project for DaimlerChrysler, a joint customer. More than 500 people are expected to attend the three-day event.