Jason Burby likes the following explanations of what web analytics is:

Jim Sterne: “Web analytics is one of the ways you measure how well your website is working. Like the speedometer on your car. That usually works on my wife’s friends, just before their eyes glaze over.”

Lars Johansson (me!): “I’m the 007 of cyberspace. I’m on a mission to make life easier for the good guys (called converters) and turn the bad guys (called non-converters or abandoners) into good guys (converters).”

How would you explain web analytics to a kid, or anybody who’s not used to it?

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I had the pleasure of talking to Bonnie Thomas, Marketing Director for Memetrics.

The first thing I wanted to find out was what the key differentiators between Memetrics and their competitors are.

Bonnie listed the following:

• The behind the firewall software deployment means that no information is passed over the Internet. It also makes it possible to deeply integrate within a multitude of systems giving access to rich customer segment data.
• More robust analytics. Possibility to optimize for multiple outcomes simultaneously.
• The methodology used is based upon choice modeling, a demand-driven optimization science. Offermatica, for instance, is focused on Taguchi. Bonnie said Memetrics methodology produces more accurate results.
• Memetrics has been around since 1999. Bonnie said others tend to sell a silver bullet while Memetrics views optimization as part technology, part process.

I also asked what share of Memetrics’ customers integrate with more than one system. Bonnie didn’t know off hand but said that it is a large percent and mentioned the possibility to create experimental rules and export them to another system, in cross-channel initiatives.

Memetrics consider their ASP solution the long tail, whereas the head is mostly the behind-the-firewall, enterprise solution.

The ASP solution is about US$50,000 a year.

The biggest challenge for Memetrics this year is evangelizing the value of multivariate testing. The problem is that businesses are realizing the value but may not have room in their current budget for an investment.

Market adoption has increased significantly since last year, and Bonnie has noticed that the inbound requests from agencies have increased dramatically.

The full interview, 22 minutes in length, is provided below.
bonniethomas.mp3

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Testing and targeting:
Optimost, TaguchiNow, Offermatica, Memetrics, SiteSpect, wunderLOOP, Conversion Multiplier, Maxymiser, Google & TouchClarity

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What makes IndexTools unique?

I strongly believe that we have a unique position in the market with our ability to provide an easy to use, highly scalable, enterprise analytics platform for a fraction of the cost of my 4 US competitors. This results in the ability for the client to spend more on people, and we are living in the times of Avinash who preaches 90% should be spent on people. If one to some extent believe in that, IndexTools is certainly one of the few viable solutions for that to happen.

If I was forced to be very specific, I would voice the opinion from some of our clients, that the ability to co-relate anything to anything in real-time (including high volume web properties), making it very visible that there is a difference between a reporting system and an analytics platform like IndexTools, is what makes us unique!

Finally, we are really a bunch of exceptionally nice people.

Do you think the new release of Google Analytics increases your need to be innovative? If so, how?

We are very confident in our offering, but not cocky on a level where we do not believe that great companies like Google do not have an impact on our business. However, we tend to compete on a client and functionality level with the standard 4 US companies.

But the new GA definitely raises the bar and I think the new release, I am saying this with my utmost respect for Brian, Avinash and Brett, is essentially a usability upgrade. However, I do believe that this is very important and an immense part of our task as an analytics vendor - to figure out how we can communicate findings in the best possible way. The new GA has done this very well and I would be surprised if you will not see a thing or two find its way into one of the paid for tools.

What share of your clients are located in Europe?

See that used to be a simple question, but we have US clients who get a very large portion of their traffic (as in local web properties) from Europe and vice versa. But if we equal invoice address of the some 3,000+ clients we have with where they do “business”, we have just about 50% of our business in Europe.

If IndexTools didn’t exist, which tool would you use and why?

I would evidently be working another start-up, and with that in mind: RAW log files and Microsoft Excel! This would not work for an enterprise company though, but I think I almost wiggled myself out of that question, didn’t I?

What is your biggest challenge in 2007 and how will you overcome it?

Getting people to understand that there is technically little difference between the $200,000 per year Omniture solution and the $70,000 per year IndexTools solution, and that the REAL IMPACT is coming from that additional person that you can hire/allocate to work your data. Essentially that the solution is NOT going to do anything for you, but giving you an opportunity to investigate.

.. and the 200 other tasks (challenges) that a profitable independent Analytics Vendor is supposed to do.

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Dennis R. Mortensen has worked in the field of Internet analysis and statistics since 1996. He is an accredited Associate Web Analytics Instructor for the University of British Columbia and a frequent speaker on the subject of analytics and affiliate marketing. Today he is the COO of IndexTools, Inc. You can follow his insights on web analytics and affiliate marketing on his blog.

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