Creating a hypothesis should be one of the first things that you do when you start running A/B and multivariate tests on your Web site. Just because you have the keys to an optimization tool (even a free one like Google Web Site Optimizer), you should NOT be starting out saying, “hey, let’s see if changing this button from ‘Add To Cart’ to ‘Buy Now’ works better!” It’s vital to understand that you need to start with a hypothesis and then set clear goals before you start testing. Setting a hypothesis is not a difficult thing to do, and it will help...

So I have access to the new updates to Google Analytics now. My first impressions of the updates are very positive. The two big additions (aside from the API) are the custom reports and segmentation. The custom reporting actually went a little beyond my expectations. The big thing here that Google has done is that you can create reports that are very deep (4 levels or so) and that you can correlate across different report dimensions easily. Now Google just needs to implement more variables and events to take this to the next level. The segmentation works well too, but it’s a little clunky...

Okay, I’m not trying to make this an Omniture blog, but they keep releasing products/services and acquiring companies at startling rate the last few weeks. That being said, I received an e-mail from them this morning about launching a beta of something called the “Omniture Developer Connection.” At first glance, this appears to be just a repository for documentation on Omniture’s Web services. One BIG thing that I did notice, is that: There is now a Discover API and accompanying documentation! This is great to see, and I hope that Omniture gives some more attention to this...

I received an e-mail this morning that Omniture has acquired Mercado, one of the largest players in on-site search. The funny thing here is that Omniture has only recently started selling the rebranded VisualScience product (which was formerly a WebSideStory product) for site search. I am guessing that Omniture will take the same direction here as they have with their Discover product, making the VisualScience product a “lite” version compared to their newly acquired product from Mercado. Here’s the e-mail Omniture sent this morning making the announcement: Dear Omniture Customer, We...

I was thinking today about the potential impact of social media on the traditional classroom environment. There were several thoughts that came to me about how social media is going to seriously change the education game for students that are utilizing it: It can’t be stopped. Students are going to use Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, etc. whether educators tell them to or not. In the past, the sharing of information in the classroom was considered cheating. Now, the Information Age is all about sharing and collaboration. Should the idea of sharing knowledge in the classroom between students...

Most experts in Web analytics dream of working for a business that makes data-driven decisions. Look at it as justification for our career choice. However, I think that this needs to be taken a step further: We should be concerned with creating an action-oriented culture, not just a data-driven one. Having access to advanced Web analytics tools, we can churn out meaningful analyses that management will most certainly use in making decisions. So, that means that we work for a data-driven company, which is a great thing indeed. The missing thing there is that the information isn’t nearly as...

This of course only really applies to current Omniture customers or those thinking about moving to Omniture as a new customer. I’ll also preface this further by saying that I am on Omniture’s Customer Advisory Board (CAB) for Discover (On-demand). Anyway, there are several reasons that you should be using Discover and several reasons why you need it in addition to the normal SiteCatalyst offering. Reasons why Discover is a good supplement to SiteCatalyst Include: SiteCatalyst’s power is in providing reports and delivereing those reports and dashboards on a regular basis. The power of Discover...

A lot of people have lost their jobs over the last few months, and a lot more probably will. Most people in analytics know that there is more demand for skilled Web analysts than there is supply. So, would you say that experts in analytics have recession-proof jobs by default? I keep seeing a lot of articles and content poping up on the Web about recession-proofing your job. Most of them say that you need to appear indespisible (perception is reality, right?) as well as be more of a jack-of-all-trades. Here’s a podcast from Harvard Business Review on this: Harvard Business IdeaCast 110: How...

Several companies have released as of lately social networking applications targeted at business users as opposed to the general public. Some of these companies/applications include: Since I have become a regular (maybe addict is a better term) user of Twitter, I find that I now rarely use e-mail, and I haven’t even logged into an instant messenger program in weeks. The idea of microblogging seems to just work better for collaboration and communication than does email or IM. On Twitter, I made a comment about Present.ly being more like e-mail 2.0 than just another Twitter clone: http://twitter.com/jasonegan/statuses/926264496 Shortly...