Advanced SiteCatalyst tags auditing with WASP

The new WASP v1.10 is  available from WebAnalyticsSolutionProfiler.com and this release feature some pretty cool Omniture SiteCatalyt tagging diagnostic features.

• Detailed “human friendly” breakdown of tags in the sidebar.
• Quick help for each tag value
• Datatype validation of tags to make sure the data isn’t corrupted
• Data length validation of tags to make sure their values are not truncated
• Hihglighted Test&Target mboxes

More information on: http://blog.immeria.net

Google Analytics On The iPhone

You’re already using your smartphone to search and surf the web. You’re using it to read and write email. You might be using it to tweet, post to your blog, or network on Facebook. If your smartphone is an iPhone, you can also use it to keep an eye on all the sites in your Google Analytics account.

With the recent launch of Analytics App, there are now three primary apps that bring Google Analytics to the iPhone; myAnalytics and Analytics Pro are the others. Analytics Pro also has a “lite” version.

But are they any good? Let me know what you think about those App’s since I have an amazing Nokia E71 instead :-)

Leave a comment or tweet me @activelife

Ryanair could do better online

There’s some buzz going on this week about Ryanair and it’s not positive imho.

• Yesterday Ryanair made an online PR blunder (or at least some staff did) by it’s unprofessional response to the exposure of a bug on its website by blogger Jason Roe who detected a glitch.
• Today Graham Charlton of E-consultancy has been looking at some other ways that the budget airline can improve user experience on its website and perform better online.
  • A better website design
  • Take criticism
  • Provide a contact number that don’t charge to call
  • Don’t distract buyers with 3rd party ads
  • Allowing more flexible search options
  • Provide alternative suggestions
  • Lose the annoying error messages (not permitting to enter invalid departure dates)

Sad but funny to say that Ryanair damm good knows about usability issues, as you can read in last years  blogpost by AMAS titled “Ryanair crash lands in online shopping survey“

Some updates below:

• Travolution(23 Feb 2009) What happened when a blogger decided to tak on Ryanair
• Times Online (24 Feb 2009) Ryanair and the ‘idiot bloggers’
• twitter.com/avinashkausik (25 Feb 2009) “If you find yourself in a hole, the first thing to do is to stop digging.”
• (25 feb 2009) Ryanair – Their attitude to Online PR part of a Bigger Reputation Problem

Oh btw, take a look at “Ryanair’s 40 favourite headlines” on Times Online

More news tommorow? Or does Ryanair continue digging ?

Yahoo! Web Analytics battles Google Analytics For Enterprise Use

A latest study suggests that Yahoo could be outstandingly winning the battle with archrival Google in the free web analytics market, despite Google’s success in the small and medium sized business market, Yahoo Web Analytics surpasses its rival in several areas, and is a better fit for enterprises than Google Analytics, according to the CMS Watch Web Analytics Report 2009.

Areas where Yahoo excels over Google according to CMS Watch include:

• Better access control options and simpler approach to multi-site analytics
• Larger default monthly page-view limits (200MM vs. 5MM – unless you have an active AdWords campaign)
• Access to traffic data: Both vendors retain the right to hold and use your web analytics data for their own purposes, but only Yahoo! gives you the ability to export out your raw, unaggregated data
• Longer historical availability of raw data

Besides, despite the better analytics platform, Yahoo! still lacks features that could make it a perfect fit for all enterprise level needs:

“Ultimately, for some enterprises, neither Google nor Yahoo! make a good fit,” explained Tony Byrne CMS Watch founder, “and those buyers should consider fee-based web analytics solutions.”

I feel the need. The need for speed.

 

Recently, I had the pleasure of sitting in on a presentation revealing the results of a large online customer satisfaction survey. Some of the finest minds in online research were presenting. Very thorough. Very thought-provoking. Very insightful. And very slow.

Let’s hear it for the boys.

I’m a boy (and fiercely proud of it). Mind you, this topic was the subject of discussion, recently.

The client, a fashion brand, wanted to know whether individuals where male or female when signing up to receive a newsletter. Checkboxes.

The client in question targets women. Visitors to their website are women. The people having the discussion at the time were all women (except for me, but we’ve covered that already).

Armed with that knowledge, I asked, “Why do you then want to know if a visitor is male or female?”

“It’s good to know,” came the quick, confident answer.

Well, it’s also good to know that an ‘aglet’ is the small plastic bit at the end of your shoelace that keeps the twine from unravelling. Good to know ,yes. But completely and utterly useless information, as I’m sure you’d agree. Unless, of course, you’re in the shoelace business or have a lot of time on your hands and think that knowing such a thing is good for making new friends.

Is this making sense?

If we are not going to use a particular piece of tasty information for anything, why should we ask for it in the first place?

Now, if – for example – we begin to see a trend over a couple of months were males are signing up for this fashion newsletter, perhaps we can enquire as to why they are doing it, and develop a value proposition just for them? Perhaps they are birthday shoppers. Perhaps they have young daughters. Perhaps they just like pink. Imagine the conversation (and conversion) possibilities.

But no. Until we know why we are asking for a piece of information, and perhaps more importantly, what we are going to use that information for, we may as well start collecting aglets.

Another case in point. My mobile operator asked me, on the first day I joined their service, what my language preference was. English, please. They noted my desire. Even confirmed it. And to this day continue to communicate with me every which way they can. In French.

So, why, if you weren’t going to use the data that I just gave you, did you ask for it?

Similarly, if we look at our metrics dashboards. Are we sure why we are measuring the things we are measuring? And once we have measured it, what are we going to do with it?

A dashboard with 1 or 2 smart little figures that we can really use is surely more useful than a dashboard with millions of the creatures?

Could there be any other reason why we would collect data that we wouldn’t use?

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P.S. Hello, by the way. Ryan Ducie, here. Guest Blogger, Content Editor, Storyteller and Metrics Idealist.