International stores, video advertising, and the Windows 7 launch

By: Alistair Croll - November 10th, 2009  Filed under: How did they do it, Web anaytics, What did they do, WIA 5 Comments

We’re in Amsterdam this week, presenting at a Measureworks conference on web performance and optimization and attending a Tweetup.

Our host, Jeroen, told us yesterday that since the introduction of GPSes in Amsterdam, traffic accidents in the narrow-streeted city have risen significantly. Many people are focused on their instruments, rather than looking around them. This made me think of some issues I’d seen with web advertising recently that would have been hard to detect through instruments alone, and underscored some of the shortcomings of a purely instrument-driven analytics approach.

Microsoft Canada's website for the Windows 7 launchWith much fanfare, Microsoft launched Windows 7. By many accounts, it’s a good operating system, despite the widely derided launch parties they tried to encourage (which, to be fair, did get people talking about the launch.) The launch involved a massive online ad buy, as well as a new online store for the company. Two aspects of this launch caught my attention: The differences between regional stores, and the state of video advertising.

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An Open Letter To All TechCrunch50 2009 Startups: The TC Bump, What It Really Means and How To Navigate It

By: Sean Power - September 12th, 2009  Filed under: Could they do it, Events, How did they do it, Misc, Social Media, w2e, What did they do, Why did they do it 51 Comments

Disclaimer 1: All site-related data found in this post comes from compete.com.  The company was kind enough to give us a “pro account” to help us research the O’Reilly book that we wrote called Complete Web Monitoring (thanks, you rock!).  However, compete.com did not sponsor this post (nor did any company, for that matter).  And yes, we know – compete.com numbers are simply estimates.

Disclaimer 2: I (Sean) worked for Akoha as Community Gardener while we launched at TechCrunch50 2008; but I’m now doing metrics, web analytics, performance, and social computing consulting.  The views found below are mine, and do not reflect those of Akoha in any way.  For the record, Akoha is awesome!

About us: This post was written by Sean Power with Alistair Croll.

Dear TechCrunch50 Startups,

Congratulations. You made the list. You’re finally launching, and that pent-up frustration of not being able to tell people about it for a month is almost at an end. Now, you have to live with a weekend of cold, hard fear that your demo will explode. You’ve got an interesting week ahead, and I know you’re short on sleep, so let me get to the point quickly.

You’re probably excited about the TC50 bump. I first saw the term used by Josh Kopelman of First Round Capital on the RedEye VC blog. The bump refers to the pounding your website is about to experience from TC50 attendees, readers, bloggers and their friends.  It’s not to be underestimated.  Here’s a glimpse at how the bump looked like for all TC50 startups in 2008.  If you squint a little, you’ll see Akoha somewhere in there!:

TechCrunch50 2008 - Unique Visitors - All Finalists - The TechCrunch Bump

This is an unprecedented influx of attention. It may be the single biggest traffic spike you’ll ever experience. Thousands of visitors will drive by your site, stay for a minute, and leave — never to return. After the bump, you’ll feel a tremendous rush of adrenaline, then deep, soul-sucking disillusionment as your traffic dwindles back to its former levels.

Don’t waste this opportunity. If you take the right steps, you can make the most of your fifteen minutes of fame.

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DemoCamp Guelph

By: Alistair Croll - March 4th, 2009  Filed under: Could they do it, DemoCamp Guelph, Events, How did they do it, Uncategorized, What did they do, Why did they do it, Writing the book Add Comment

We’re doing a presentation that’s excerpted from the book at DemoCamp Guelph tonight. Should be an interesting conversation; we have an “exercise” planned. Sean can’t be here (he was at Podcamp and has to get real work done after a weekend of editing the 400+ figures in the text!) but will be joining on Twitter. If you have photos from the event, or questions for Sean, we’ll be using the #CWM hashtag (for Complete Web Monitoring, the title of the book.)

One of the projects we’ve been working on is trying to create a single, comprehensive overview of the Complete Web Monitoring process. Here’s where we’re at (and an early glimpse at a poster we’re working on.)

First of all, a complete monitoring strategy includes the many questions a web analyst needs to answer:

  • Web analytics (“what did they do?”)
  • Web Interaction Analytics (“how did they do it?”)
  • Voice of the Customer (“why did they do it?”)
  • Both synthetic and real user performance monitoring (“could they do it?”)
  • Community monitoring (“what are they saying?”, “who’s talking?”, and “where are they saying it?”

Any strategy also has to look at several different stages in monitoring:

  • Arrival (“I visited the site”)
  • Usage (“I played with it”)
  • Engagement (“I’m a part of it”)
  • Revenue (“I paid for it”)
  • Referrals (“I spread the word”)

If these look somewhat like Dave McClure’s Pirate Metrics, it’s because he’s awesome and we borrow heavily from his thinking on startup metrics. Anyway, this PDF is a work in progress of trying to align the big questions analysts need to answer with the various stages of visitor engagement. Once we sex it up a bit, we’ll make some posters.

I’ll put the DemoCamp slides up here shortly.

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