No surprise here for many. It would have been nice to see things go the other way, but c’est la vie. Read the press release (VS) and read the press release (Omniture).
With this much analytics power under one roof the future will be interesting. My guess is that HBX will disappear with current clients migrated over; Visual Science will be integrated into Discover; then we’ll see someone gobble up the whole lot in this race for BI supremacy.
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Visual Sciences released HBX 4.1 today. A bunch of new features (many of them long-overdue) including:
Campaign hierarchy and reporting – You can now assign classifications to campaigns (up to 10) and report on performance across attributes. For example compare ads across properties, by ad size across various publications or more easily identify top performers or problems.
Improved dashboard management – Finally you can include a wider range of metrics (such as commerce and filtered reports), drag and drop dashboards, search across all dashboards, create dashboards that can be shared with specific users, groups or accounts (users can also subscribe to unlimited shared reports) and up to 10 dashboards are now available.
New content report – Added the Average Time Spent on Content Hierarchy.
User defined homepage – Pick what you want to see when you login
Set variables via the URL – Pass any HBX variable via the URL without having to update page code.
Password recovery/reset – Reset your password yourself.
Additionally some changes to password management, a new localized Japanese user interface. Once I’ve had some time to play with things I’ll post some more details.
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Microsoft’s Popfly (a slick Silverlight application), let non-coders and those with the knowledge, create web mashups without writing code. BETA now open.
June Li (ClickInsight) and PublicInsite are presenting a one-day web analytics training seminar in Toronto on November 14. 10% off for QAA members, 15% for groups of 3 or more and both discounts if you do both. Cool.
Brian Clifton tells us how to backup Google Analytics data locally. A nice way to get around the 25 month data limitation.
eMetrics Toronto will be happening April 1-3 in Toronto. Yipee! On the advisory board is June Li (ClickInsight) and Alex Langshur (PublicInsite), Stephane Hamel from Immeria and our newest Canadian resident Joseph Carrabis.
Kumquat promises to improve the stale, thoughtless annual review many employees ensure. A fresh idea in the web 2.0 space.
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Seth Godin’s How to create a great website
Here are principles I think you can’t avoid:
- Fire the committee. No great website in history has been conceived of by more than three people. Not one. This is a dealbreaker.
- Change the interaction. What makes great websites great is that they are simultaneously effortless and new at the same time. That means that the site teaches you a new thing or new interaction or new connection, but you know how to use it right away. (Hey, if doing this were easy, everyone would do it.)
- Less. Fewer words, fewer pages, less fine print.
- What works, works. Theory is irrelevant.
- Patience. Some sites test great and work great from the start. (Great if you can find one). Others need people to use them and adjust to them. At some point, your gut tells you to launch. Then stick with it, despite the critics, as you gain traction.
- Measure. If you’re not improving, if the yield is negative… kill it.
- Insight is good, clever is bad. Many websites say, “look at me.†Your goal ought to be to say, “here’s what you were looking for.â€
- If you hire a professional: hire a great one. The best one. Let her do her job. 10 mediocre website consultants working in perfect harmony can’t do the work of one rock star.
- One voice, one vision.
- Don’t settle.
The only one I don’t agree with is “less”. Frankly I think you need to take the space to say what you need to say. If you can say it in less, all the more to you.
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A nifty Adobe AIR application that brings Google Analytics to the desktop.
Brian Clifton is running a multi-part series (Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4) on implementing web analytics (with lots of nods to Google Analytics)
Afshan Kirmani’s series Getting a Form’s Structure Right and the accompanying podcast (32:14) in which “she talks further with Jeff Parks about the concepts of affordance, orientation, and chunking. They go into detail about the importance of security, lure, and communicating with the end user through text and graphical elements to ensure they know precisely where they are in the application process.”
E-Mail Success or Failure – a great example from Kevin Hillstrom author of Hillstrom’s Multichannel Forensics.
David Gray from XPlane has launched VizThink a new community for visual thinkers, and there is a conference (VizThink ‘08). Interesting presenters and ideas will abound at this event.
Speaking of conferences: I won’t be making the D.C. EMetrics Marketing Optimization Summit this time around and can’t make it out to WebCom Montreal on November 14. Perhaps someone else can take my place.
Congrats to Stratigent, Visual Sciences first Visual Site Certified Partner.
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