Digital Citizen 2008

Earlier this week, I had the opportunity to attend ForeSee Results‘ Digital Citizen 2008 Summit.  I was only able to attend the first half of the event due to client meetings in the afternoon. One morning session was fairly sales-oriented. One was a fun case study about the National Park Service web site (which I particularly enjoyed because the National Parks Conservation Association is a BF client).

But the best session I was able to attend was Eric Peterson’s opening keynote. Aside from being a really engaging speaker, Peterson is also pretty much a guru in the art and science of web analytics (and do follow the link to his site, because he offers a ton of free resources there).

Peterson opened with the concept that satisfaction is a function of expectations. “Well, duh,” you’re probably thinking, but how many times do we disappoint our constituents not because what we’re offering is bad, but because we led them to expect something different than what they got?

Peterson also immediately disabused us of the notion that occasionally running a report out of Google Analytics is sufficient. While the tools themselves have improved in the past 15 years, he pointed out that the really important, useful advances have been made in taking that data and turning it into knowledge organizations can act on.

Peterson pointed out that organizations all make one of three errors in trying beneficially use information about their web traffic beneficially:

• An investment gap – because even free tools aren’t free.
• A staffing gap – because data without interpretation and application is just a big pile of numbers.
• A process gap – because unless you’re willing to change your business processes based on what you learn, you’ll never see a return on your investment.

These parallel the three factors that have to be in order so that organizations can effectively make sense of their web traffic: technology, people, and process. And, as you might guess, the last one is the hard one.

Peterson went on to describe an analysis ecosystem, made up of analytics tools, personalization, multivariate testing, and the voice/experience of the customer. Rather than trying to explain the full concept here, I’ll point out that he’s written a white paper that’s available for free download (from ForeSee Results) and that lays out how all these factors interact to provide both quantitative and qualitative data to give organizations a complete picture of how to improve their constituents’ experiences with them.

And finally, if this topic really interests you, be sure to check out the next Web Analytics Wednesday in your area.

Edited Friday, October 10 at 9:48 am to add:  The slides of all the presentations are now available for free download.