President’s Message: Networking at the Symposiums

A few weeks ago I had the opportunity to witness first-hand one of the things that I love most about WAA. I originally joined WAA for a few reasons: to meet other analysts, to gain knowledge about the analytics discipline, and to learn what other companies are doing. All of these things came to life earlier this month at the WAA Seattle Symposium.

This year, the Seattle Symposium drew 350 analysts to the Microsoft campus to learn from a range of knowledgeable and gifted leaders in the field. We heard from some of the most recognizable names like Jim Sterne from eMetrics and Joe Megibow from Expedia as well as others, like Kevin Hilstrom, that were new.

We also heard from an incredible panel comprised of practitioners, consultants, and vendors that was probably one of the best panels I’ve heard in a long time. My favorite part of the discussion was the role of analytics in the recent Netflix debacle. You have to check that out.

And we have an easy way for you to experience the Symposium yourself with video from the Symposium accessible on the WAA website.

WAA also has Symposiums this coming year planned for:

• Philadelphia – November 2
• Los Angeles – January 18
• Austin – February 9
• Atlanta – May 2012

I hope you have the chance to view or attend a Symposium this year. Maybe you’d be interested in organizing one in your city. It’s a lot of work, but the WAA provides support with logistics, etc. and what a great way to build community among your local analysts.

Career Development for Digital Analysts: Resources Available

Are you a new analyst looking for a way into the digital analytics industry? An analyst looking for advice on how to grow in your role or be promoted? Looking for a new opportunity?

For the past year, the WAA Membership Committee has been working on an initiative to provide WAA members with information regarding careers in the digital measurement industry.

We are pleased to announce two new resources available for WAA members, to help you understand the opportunities in the industry.

1. Compiled from the insight of a representative sample of industry perspectives (client, vendor, agency and consulting side), the WAA’s Career Guide for Digital Analysts (members only link) is an overview of careers in the digital measurement industry, including:
   • The types of companies analysts can work for;
   • Typical hierarchy and responsibilities for each role;
   • Educational and skill set requirements, including the importance of emerging skill sets; and
   • Advice for those looking to break into the field, be promoted or find a new opportunity.
2. A panel-based session at eMetrics New York (Friday 10/21 at 2.05PM) where client, agency and consulting side practitioners come together to provide an overview of a career in their type of organisation, and discuss their advice for a successful career in digital analytics.

At the same time, we are kicking off an initiative to encourage careers in digital analytics. As many of us know, the digital measurement is industry suffering a shortage of talent in the industry. This program is aimed to provide information and encouragement to people to consider a career in digital measurement.

Interested in learning more or getting involved? Please contact the Membership Committee.

Download the WAA Career Guide for Digital Analysts (members only link)

From your President – Peter Sanborn: WAA Officially Launches Local Chapter Program at Industry Meeting at eMetrics on 10/20/11

If you are someone who likes to "think globally but act locally", then you'll be excited to learn more about the WAA Local Chapter Program. I can speak to the benefits of the local chapter program personally as a WAA Member because in addition to my "global" responsibilities as WAA's president, this year I've been involved with our local WAA Seattle Chapter.

Under the leadership of Casey Doyle, Olga Spaic, David Barber and many other local WAA members, the Seattle Chapter has flourished. In fact, we are just getting ready to host our 2nd Annual WAA Seattle Symposium that is shaping up to be a huge success.

Other local chapters have been (or are soon to be) established in Austin, Philadelphia, Boston, Los Angeles and, Chicago.

The WAA wants to make starting and operating a chapter as easy as possible, therefore the association will work with members to build strong and successful chapters.

At their core, chapters are local organizations run by local members and the ongoing activities will be in the hands of local organizers. The WAA has developed a chapter development document guide, which will be available at the WAA Industry Meeting at eMetrics, to help in the starting and operation of a chapter.

Chapters are extensions of WAA. Local volunteer organizers have the power to plan and conduct activities using their knowledge of the local industry and area.

Along with the numerous advantages of being part of WAA there are a few important obligations: Chapters are expected to be self-supporting financially, follow WAA’s regular policies and procedures and abide by WAA’s chapter policies as described in the Chapter Development Guide.

A local chapter is an extension of the WAA, the HQ advocate for web analytics - and now it’s right in your home town. Think of it as an educational branch office of the association.

Attend the WAA Industry Meeting during eMetrics in New York at noon on October 20 to learn more. If you are not attending, here is what to do:

• If you are interested in getting involved in one of the chapters mentioned above then email us for how to get involved.
• If you are interested in forming a chapter in your area then email us and we will help you get started.

WAA – Coming to a Town Near You!

Aspen trees reproduce by shooting new roots a few feet in front of them and then watching as new trees spring to life. And when that cycle repeats itself a few times over, you have a colorful, healthy, self-sustaining grove that will last for generations.

WAA is attempting a similar feat with the development of local WAA Symposiums and WAA Chapters. In fact, as I write this, I am en route from Austin to Seattle returning from the WAA Austin Symposium.

The Austin Symposium, organized by fellow board member Ed Wu and his fantastic team at Dell, pretty much blew my socks off. Hundreds of analysts gathered to learn more about, "The Art and Science of Personalization".

As I listened to the amazing array of speakers talk about digital personalization, it struck me that I was also witnessing a form of personalization right before my eyes. That is, the personalization of our association.

It started in Seattle, then Chicago, then Austin, and, soon, Boston. WAA Symposiums and local chapters are cropping up across the country.

Why?

Because people want to meet other people working on similar stuff, and not just on Facebook, I mean actually meet face-2-face. Yes, this is even true for us numbers-obsessed, data-loving analysts.

So, how can you join in?

WAA wants to bring these amazing Symposiums to cities around the globe so more members have the opportunity to learn and network. To that end, WAA is seeking companies that are Corporate Members to host similar Symposiums either on your corporate campus or a nearby facility.

One of the key benefits for a host company is to provide opportunities to large numbers of employees to learn from some of the industry’s most influential experts. Additionally, Symposiums are a great way to launch a local WAA chapter for ongoing education and networking.

If you are interested in bringing a WAA Symposium to your company, let us know. If your company is not yet a Corporate Member, we can arrange for that as well. Contact to get started.

What about Chapters?

While Symposiums are a great way to launch a chapter, not all cities are large enough to support the larger events. But chapters can still be successful without a Symposium. If you are interested in starting a local WAA chapter yet, let us know! WAA is finishing what we refer to as the "chapter in a box" manual to make it as easy as possible for you and the formal launch of the WAA chapter program will be announced in the near future. In the interim, let us know if you are interested and we can fill you in on all the details.

Every WAA chapter requires only 2 ingredients: enthusiasm and leadership.

So, if you have those 2 things (and I know you do), contact , to find out how to get started.

Peter Sanborn
President, WAA

2011 WAA Awards for Excellence: Call for Nominations

Are you or one of your colleagues a web analytics pro who deserves recognition? At the inaugural edition of the WAA Awards for Excellence, the WAA will celebrate the outstanding contribution to our profession of both individuals and groups. Here’s your chance to get out from the shadows and into the spotlight with other industry luminaries.

Nominate yourself or your colleague by February 2, 2011 and you will be a step closer to the podium at the Awards Gala event on March 15, 2011 in San Francisco.

Complete nomination information including the awards categories and nomination form are available.

Learn more about the 2011 WAA Spring Awards Gala concurrent with the 2011 eMetrics Marketing Optimization Summit.

WAA Holds First Chapter Meeting in Chicago

On October 20th the WAA and Corporate member Arc Worldwide, a Division of Leo Burnett, hosted approximately 50 members and non-members at the first WAA Chapter Meeting in Chicago. The half day meeting focused on:

• education with Bryan Eisenberg sharing his “21 Secrets to Top Converting Websites”
• networking with a continental breakfast
• planning for the newly created WAA Chicago Chapter

If you or a colleague are interested in participating in the Chicago Chapter please contact .

As the WAA heads into 2011 you’ll be seeing and hearing details on how to get involved in WAA Chapters, if you are interested in starting a chapter in your city please contact . If you want to become involved in the initial planning stages of Chapter Development join the Membership Committee.

WAA Webcast Series Follow-Up: Web Analytics Lab - Data Warehouse/BI Integration for Predictive Insights - Panel Q&A

On Tuesday, July 21, 2009, the WAA broadcasted its most recent webcast entitled Web Analytics Lab - Data Warehouse/BI Integration for Predictive Insights. This event was presented and created by our corporate sponsor Unica. If you missed the presentation, don't worry, you can view the archived recording. Michelle Rutan from National Instruments continues the discussion by answering additional questions not aired during the presentation.

Q: Do you apply any kind of grouping or thesaurus to the keyword side of your analysis? Have you tried information and/or entropy approach to the essence calculation? Do you subtract essence for keywords that were a bounce for a landing page?

A: As far as grouping basically we start with running SQL queries on the page/keyword index to identify all the keyword variations that we want to include. We are building a thesaurus of sort, but each requester has their own views which makes this interesting. As far as an entropy or weighting of different keywords, other than the initial weight it gets from the number of referrals we are not doing this. This project is a long journey changing all of the time as we fine tune things. I mentioned that we take out certain generic pages from our index and wouldn't search on high volume keywords just because the accuracy would be low. We are looking constantly at how to fine tune this.

Q: Keywords being used to drive traffic to the site depends on the pages being ranked well for those words. Is this kind of a self fulfilling process? How do you account for this in your SEO
efforts?

A: Addressed during the webinar. Please check the archived recording if you didn't get a chance to attend.

Q: Data Quality: with such a large numbers of data, with various sources, did you use a formal master data management (MDM) approach?

A: I would love to say we are that far. In the data life-cycle our essence is still really new. We are still formulating all of the uses and learning all of the caveats. When we finalize these uses and are ready to make them a standard part of our customer data we will be integrating into our MDM. To get as far as we are I consulted with database administrators to design the database, statisticians for how to do the calculations, and worked with our search guru on general concepts.

Q: Could you expand a bit more on how you calculate the essence score?

A: Pages are broken into keywords that have referred them to the page so all keywords index for a page total 1 for each page. So DAQ might be .79 for ni.com/daq. Then looking at a persons visit history we take all of the pages they visited and look for the keywords that we are interested in…and add the keyword index scores together for each person. So if they visited /daq and /labview and DAQ for /daq had a keyword index of .79 and DAQ for /labview had a keyword index of .02 then their DAQ essence is .81.

Q: What has been the biggest surprise "learning" in implementing this?

A: A couple things:

Keywords - I initially imagined just typing in what you were looking for, but given that we have such a long tail of keywords it takes more effort than I thought to identify the variations you are interested in. This is the first and manual step in our process to calculate each essence request.

Score breadth - Again I initially thought this would be a really clean clear score. The score range is significantly different for each query so we have been focusing a lot on what % of the results to use for each query. I never imagined we would get essences of .001 to .00001 but due to the number of keyword referrals it is a long long tail.

Q: Would unsupervised cluster analysis be helpful to find clusters? Is it fair to extrapolate from search referred visitors to all visitors?

A: We are not doing any unsupervised cluster analysis….it is all manually extracted, cleaned and through trial and error clustered (in sorts).

Q: How do you know their email IDs. Do they have to login through an authentication system?

A: There are many sections of our site that if you give us information we offer personalization or will save your cart or project. There are also many advanced technical resources that require an end user to give their information. This web site identifier is how we know about them and tie them to back-end contacts.

5 Do’s and Don’ts for Behavioral Segmentation, Targeting, & Interactive Marketing- Your Questions Answered!

On December 4, 2008 the WAA presented the Unica sponsored webcast: 5 Do’s and Don’ts for Behavioral Segmentation, Targeting, & Interactive Marketing. The full presentation of this webcast is available here, but you must register or login to view. This was an extremely informative session that drew many questions from the audience - and now here are the answers from our expert panel!

More time for WAA Championship participants

The Marketing Committee has decided to push back the deadline for the championship by one week based on a few participants requests. So the new deadline will be June 22.

The WAA championship is open!

In order to participate, get the login info for the WAA Google Analytics account and start analyzing the website. We created several customized profiles in order to help bring insights regarding our visitors. The explanation of each profile can also be found in the login info page.