It has been just shy of a year since I started blogging for Sitebrand.  For those of you who have been reading my blog since I started writing over a year ago (my mom and fiancee), and those who have been reading, commenting and emailing, thanks for your support!

Despite having started writing while still part of the sales department, I decided from the outset to have a strong focus on the fundamental principles behind conversion optimization through dialog personalization, and less of a focus on promoting Sitebrand.  The assumption being that if you agree with the concepts behind creating marketing driven dialog with a traffic segment, there is really only one game in town….But I digress.

I am talking about the focus of my blog because it is rare that I get the chance to leave the cube here in Gatineau and go out and talk to practitioners of digital marketing to hear what they currently do and what they want to do when it comes to optimizing visitor outcomes.

Last month Stephane Hamel of Immeria and WASP fame invited our CTO, Falk Gottlob, and myself to attend a Web Analytics Wednesday event in Montreal.  Not a lot of hesitating on my response, and going to Montreal was just icing on the cake.

Falk and I got the chance to have a few cold beers and a few heated debates about the state of analytics and optimization, and met some fantastic people.

So I was both surprised and excited to be invited to come back and be the presenter at the next event, which will take place next week.

Much like my blogging, the emphasis of the presentation will be less on Sitebrand and more on how a marketer can understand a specific traffic segment, and then optimize their experience to increase their goal conversion.

Per my last post, I will be sticking to my current favorite segment, the First Time Visitor, and I am jazzed to see what the questions and responses will be to the talk.

A few important points for those attending: I love questions and Sitebrand is buying the beer.

Looking forward to seeing you in la belle province.

Cheers,

Jim

Click Here to register for this Web Analytics Wednesday event, Oct 15, 2008 @ Le Local

Click Here to learn more about WASP, a must have tool for any practitioner of analytics.

I have been a little lax on my blogging recently, so rather than my usual punditry I thought I would give some updates on the things I have been working on.  As Sitebrand continues to solidify its position as a thought leader on web personalization, we are becoming more involved in interesting industry initiatives (ed: nice alliteration!) and I will touch on two things in particular I am quite excited about.

1) WAA Standards Document first release!

Last week, the web analytics association published an updated version of the Web Analytics Definitions document, which outlines all the key terms that are used by practitioners in our industry in an attempt to codify and standardize.  Believe it or not, but until the first iteration of this document last year, there were no defined terms in the analytics space, only a tribal agreement on certain terms in principle.  I have been on this committee for several months, and it has been both interesting and very informative.

I highly recommend that anyone who uses web analytics as part of their job click here to download a copy of the document, and post any and all feedback to the WAA blog.  A number of very talented people did a lot of work to make this document happen, and it won’t achieve its goals unless it is read, discussed and adopted by our industry at large.  As a further plug, each term has an ‘ask your vendor’ section, so that you can see how different terms are applied in different analytics products.

2) Rise of the First Time Visitor!

Waaaaaay back in March of this year, I referenced in the blog that I was working on a whitepaper regarding the First Time Visitor segment of website traffic, and how it could be understood and optimized.  The ensuing document is entitled “First Time Here?: A marketer oriented approach to optimizing online conversions”.  The always amazing Bryan Eisenberg of FutureNow and Always Be Testing fame wrote a great forward for the piece, and we will be doing a webinar with him next month on this segment.

Jason Burby of ZAAZ also referenced the whitepaper recently in his column on ClickZ.  He is also a prolific writer on our industry, having penned a great book on Actionable Web Analytics.   It has been pretty exciting to have two of my favorite writers in the industry think well of this work, and I hope it inspires debate about how to understand, and talk to, the first time visitor segment. Click here if you would like to download a copy.

Those are the big updates for now, and I will be back online in the next week or so with a more formal post.

Cheers,

Jim

UPDATE - Since the original publishing of this blog, I have been asked to give a presentation on the First Time Visitor Segment at a Web Analytics Wednesday in Montreal, October 15th.  If you are in the area we would love to meet you. Sign up Here if you are interested.