Further to my point on Site Search, with strong data to support this (Posts on Session length parts 1, 2, 3, and 4) I am convinced the “click” is the online currency.
Is there anyone really doubting this? There is indeed enough evidence to support this now. Take a look at your Web analytics reports, read usability dissertations, listen to all these anecdotes strongly suggesting the same thing. The quicker users get to their goal, the less they are likely to leave your site.
Time is money, and clicks take time.
If you own some Internet stocks you may have seen Yahoo was down 11.5% today on disappointing revenue guidance. You may have also noticed Yahoo’s market cap is about half of Google’s now ($46B vs $86B). (FYI, I’m a long-time Yahoo smaller shareholder).
In the context of Web analytics, I’ve heard this so many times it isn’t funny – “Why bother with a complex, over-invested home page. Let’s just have a search box with a killer search engine running in the backend.” Of course that isn’t going to happen and not many people could do it anyway. But consider this: if your site had a killer search engine, just as good as Google’s, and users knew about its greatness, would they still use the regular nav to find their product?
It’s time to rethink Site Search. For most Marketers, Site Search is there for the people who can’t find what they’re looking for with the regular nav. I predict that not before too long it’ll be any site’s central feature, and all the rest (promos, navigation, cool buttons, etc), just there decoration.
Yahoo’s bold move?
It’s hard to miss out on Omniture’s $40M funding announcement. The funding’s well deserved – it also puts the entire Web analytics space back into every VC’s radar and it won’t be long before Wall Street takes another hard look at the space as well. I was surprised to see Omniture’ valuation publicly disclosed in a press article, but these things are seldom done by accident, especially if the company is a few months away from its public offering.
What will Omniture do with the funding – and how this is going to affect the space is the question. Given the pricing pressures on the lower end of the market, the ferocious competition for the mid and high end markets, and the lack of differentiation between vendors, only two viable strategies are left to consider.
Strategy 1 is to stay focused in analytics and build up IP in the Best Practices area, i.e. to provide Web analytics consulting to clients. Best Practices is what customers have been yelling and screaming for – one the other hand, building up a large consulting organization is a real challenge because talent is very scarce (the important word in this sentence is “large”). In essence, this option makes good sense on paper, but financially speaking it is hard to get sustained growth and high margins.
Strategy 2 is to continue to build up the platform by making acquisitions in the e-Marketing space. A handful of vendors (Digital River/Fireclick, WebSideStory, Webtrends) have gone that route and started building a true e-Marketing suite which are integrated and work well together. This option makes more sense financially-speaking because you can keep higher margins and scale the business more effectively. On the flip side acquiring companies and integrating them is expensive, takes time and requires a solid long term vision.
So when I read Josh James (Omniture’s Chief Executive) saying “In this industry, whoever gets the largest the fastest is going to win“ – I’d call for more prudence and remind Josh that there is a long history of Web analytics companies which got very big, very fast, went public, and then fell apart. But I guarantee he (or his investors) knows this, and bet you $100 Omniture is loudly advertising the Strategy 1 and silently executing on Strategy 2. At least I hope.
Eric Peterson from Jupiter Research has a new blog on KPIs, in preparation for his next book. Prior to focusing on KPIs, Eric authored Web analytics demystified and is about to release an O’Reilly book called “Web Site Measurement Hacks” (August 2005). Should be interesting.
Congratulations to London for stealing the 2012 Olympics from Paris, at the last minute. Shows again how prudent one has to be when using analytics to predict the outcome of any human experiment. Thankfully, Lance is still in yellow and last time I checked he was riding the French Alps, not East London. JUST KIDDING!!
Talking about London, Brian Clifton from Omega Digital Media put together a nice and balanced article presenting the differences between solutions which rely on Page tags VS solutions which use Log files. If you’re looking for a Web analytics solution, this is one of the papers I’d recommend reading, along with the latest Network Computing review.
It’s a few days old and not terribly exciting - Karolyne Smith from Utah auctionned her forehead for a commercial tattoo. Interesting quote from the Golden Palace’s CEO, winner of the auction:
Conventional forms of marketing just don’t cut it anymore.
The top spot for “online casino” is at $3.50 on Yahoo Search right now. $15,000 would get these guys about 4,300 clicks. This in contrast with: - the brand recognition they’ve gotten from this story, - the ranking gains in top search engines, - the number of press articles and blogs such as this one talking about the story. I wouldn’t be too surprised if Mister Rowe considered Yahoo and Google to be conventional forms of marketing - given the current insane keyword prices.
