Last spring we partnered up with Atomic Labs to make it easy for you to get insight into how your customers and prospects are browsing your mobile sites. Their Pion product offers a great solution for companies, looking for a code free method to capture this information, that is complementary to Webtrends tools for client or server side mobile tracking.

We are very excited that they have recently released Pion Lite, a free version of their product. This easy to deploy software captures audience data for Webtrends by passively “listening” to all of the network traffic between web servers and visitors, using a technique known as packet sniffing. Very easy to install with zero impact to your web server performance. A concern for packet sniffing appliances of the past, this one is physically incapable of impacting your traffic or website performance in any way.

Also, they are not just limited to collecting data from mobile sites. If tagging traditional web content is too much for you to manage or you are just not getting what you need from server log files (gasp), think about checking out their service. Their Enterprise product can do some amazing transformation of data in real-time from local data stores to enrich the data before it even hits the Webtrends service.

Check out their site for more information or to download Pion Lite.

I didn’t think I had in me to do 2 blog posts featuring Huey Lewis and the News but here I am again not only showing my age (also I do listen to other bands) with one of the bands lyrics spinning around in my head.

What on earth is he going on about this time I hear you cry, well here is the story…

A few weeks back I went to see a client of whom I have been a longstanding customer of their online channel for nearly 7 years. During the meeting I logged into my account and the response from the team in the room was;

“why did you log in like that? You aren’t supposed to do it that way, you should do it like this”

This response took me back, after all the web is a democracy and users will always find the path that suits them whatever that may be, no matter what designers, site owners and developers say. We all are guilty of this trait, when you immerse yourself in your work, your brand, your site or campaign its sometimes a challenge to think how a user thinks and interacts with you as that site or brand.

This then led nicely into the discussion of Optimize, webtrends latest weapon of mass optimization or WMO as I like to call it

Consumers , customers, visitors , users now EXPECT a relevant, personal service (we can all thank thought leaders such as Amazon for this). and they will always follow the path they choose, no matter what roadblocks are put in the way, everyone is different.
Why depend on a singular, myopic view of your site when you now have a choice, by the use of testing and then retargeting your site can finally appeal to the masses and serve their goals therefore helping you achieve yours as a business.

I’ll leave it to Huey to wrap up;

You should know that it isn’t that simple, no one’s always right…You just gotta learn to see The forest for the trees”

Marketers today want data out of their marketing efforts. Getting data out of Facebook has been particularly challenging. Because of the limited tracking options and the need for data, brands have been pushing users to apps, even if their content doesn’t need to be an app.

But now there’s a better choice: Webtrends’ Facebook Analytics.

Our Facebook Analytics solution makes having to choose between zero data and high drop off rates a non-issue. It works as a stand-alone tool or as an add-on to Webtrends’ Analytics 9 and uses an innovative method to capture detailed metrics for the parts of Facebook that, until now, had been impossible measure. Today, we are proud to add Flash tracking inside Facebook to our growing list of capabilities, which now include:

• Custom tabs
• Custom apps
• Flash
• Links
• Advertisements and conversions
• E-mail signups
• Pop-ups
• Content sharing

Learn more about the Webtrends Facebook Analytics solution by attending our free webinar Facebook for Grown-Ups and Marketers on April 7, 2010. You’ll be amazed at how much Facebook customer intelligence you’re missing without Facebook Analytics!

We were rather meticulous about getting all of the instrumentation correct so we could understand exactly how folks were using our app. Like everyone else developing applications, we need to understand what features are working for users, etc. We have just about everything you can imagine in the app that you’d be curious to measure:

• Screen views
• Offline views (caching measurement data when the device is offline, and sending it when the device reconnects)
• Multiple “tabs” (groups of content)
• List views
• Swiping left/right to reveal more data
• Turning the device sideways, generating different views of the data
• Button clicks to reveal new data on the same view
• Searching for data
• Refreshing analytics data
• Tap and hold to reveal even more drilldown data
• Launching a browser to deliver Help and other content
• Launching an email window to share data
• Capturing Geo Location data to better understand where the app is being used
• Measuring the interaction of a logged in visitor
• Shake device to display random data (ok…that one didn’t make it into the final design…but it made for some good geeky humor along the way!)

In the process of building out our own app we created some amazing measurement methods to track all of these features that we’ve now baked into our new beta iPhone SDK which will be released soon. Our Android SDK has also been expanded to include this functionality as well to keep these SDKs in parity as much as the platforms allow. The feature list within our SDKs is extremely rich, with functionality that doesn’t exist anywhere else in the industry. Developers will have, for the first time, the capability of effortlessly tracking rich visitor interaction, offline behavior, detailed geo-location based data, refreshes, searches, etc.

Most web site developers are used to inserting tracking code into their web pages to track site-based activity, but there’s far less expertise out there in the mobile app development community to create the same level of measurement. Our SDKs are incredibly simple to instrument for basic tracking, and easy to extend into custom features within your app.

When coupled with the amazing flexibility Webtrends Analytics and Visitor Data Mart solutions our Mobile Analytics offering presents some killer options for Webtrends customers who want to accurately measure the reach and impact of their mobile investments.

By the same account, Android has captured market share against Apple with steady growth in the last quarter of 2009. According to mocoNews, Google CEO Eric Schmidt claimed in his keynote address at the Mobile World Congress that over 60,000 phones that run Android ship every day.

So, do you cross your fingers and start with just an iPhone app, and see where that takes you? Or, do you roll out mobile apps across all of the major platforms, maybe starting with iPhone and Android, and go from there?

Chances are your web site can provide some useful insight on where to start, and could fill in some necessary numbers for your business case. Web site data is very complementary and unique to other sources of market data that you are likely pulling together since it comes directly from your own customer base.

Here are two Webtrends reports to watch that are pretty simple, directly relevant to your business, and will help you get a pulse for the types of SmartPhones your existing mobile audience is accessing your site with.

Mobile Browsers – Provides insight into which platforms provide an immediate audience to capture. Notice that Google saw an increase of 224% in the previous 28 days.

Mobile Devices – Drilling down to the device model can help your product team and developers prioritize which devices to support coming out of the gate.

Keep an eye on this data over time. Who knows, a Windows Phone absent one month may suddenly come screaming up the charts and demand your attention.

I am not saying that you should pull the handbrake on your current mobile efforts until you have a fully fleshed out strategy, just as I am not recommending that you wait to measure anything until you have all of this buttoned up. Start simple and start early, just don’t get stuck in the crawl stage for too long.
 
What are some of the challenges you are facing in defining a mobile strategy and laying out a plan to measure your success?

BusinessWeek announced today that Yuri Milner, the man behind the Moscow-based Internet holding company Digital Sky Technologies, has allocated a cool $1 billion for investing in social web startups over the next five years.

DST usually takes small stakes in big, proven companies that aren’t necessarily interested in offering public shares. Recently Milner’s company plunked down $200 million for an almost 2% stake in Facebook, the world’s largest social network. This strong investment by DST in social media technology is yet another health indicator of the space during this difficult economic climate.

Coca-Cola and Unilever are moving away from traditional campaign sites and toward social web sites like Facebook and YouTube. And this year – for the first time in 23 years – Pepsi did not show commercials during the Super Bowl broadcast. Instead, the company plans to give away over $20 million in their social campaign The Pepsi Refresh Project. Until this year, Pepsi was one company you could depend on spending millions of dollars for the change to be one of the Super Bowl advertisers.

This increase in spending supports the Forrester survey released in March of 2009 which reports a whopping 95% of social media marketers will maintain or increase their social media spending. What’s driving this? As the executive summary of the report says, “These inexpensive tools can quickly get marketing messages out through interactive discussion and rapid word of mouth, and properly managed, can deliver measurable results.”

In the above Google trend graph we can see that the average number of times the term “social media” has appeared in Google News stories has increased steadily since 2007. (This is also the year that Twitter account numbers exploded). Since 2008, mentions of the term “social media marketing” have also increased. Although this term lags behind “social media” in momentum, this gain is indicative of the growing acceptance of using social media technology to promote businesses.

The Forrester report is validated by recent announcements from huge companies like Coke/Unilever and Pepsi who continue to pour their marketing dollars into social media channels.

With DST investing heavily in social media technology, steadily increasing Google buzz, a Forrester survey suggesting almost all marketers plan to spend their budget on social media marketing – including giant companies Coke/Unilever and Pepsi – it looks like the social media marketing trend is here to stay.

The Forrester report says it best: social media playtime is over. Now it’s just business as usual.

Heard about site optimization, but know nothing about it? Want to learn about A/B and multivariate testing or optimization in general?

If so, then check out this educational webinar about the basics of optimization:

• The test methods available, when to use them, and real-life examples
• The language of site optimization
• Where and how to start
• What goes into segmenting, targeting, and personalizing site content

Speaking are Bob Garcia, Director of Product Marketing for Optimize and Frans Keylard, Director of Optimization Solutions.  Bob and Frans are two of the most sophisticated optimization people out there, so this is a great opportunity to learn from the best.

The webinar is coming up quick (January 21 at 11:00AM PST) so register today.  Read more information and sign-up here.

As always, check out the Optimization Blog for more articles and how-to’s on optimization.

Watch Webtrends’ Optimize Webinar Series and Learn How to Build a Business Case for Optimization

According to Bob Garcia, Webtrends’ Director of Product Marketing for Optimize, a lot of professional marketers believe the term “site optimization” means configuring a web site for SEO, performing site performance tweaks, and testing the integrity of a page’s HTML. I know I did, until I watched the webinar Build Your Business Case for Optimization and learned that that site optimization is a continuum of this three-step system:

1. Testing (without assumptions)
2. Targeting (defining meaningful customer segments)
3. Personalization (predictive targeting)

Hosted by Bob Garcia and VP of Products Casey Carey, this comprehensive webinar will arm digital marketers with valuable information to share with budget-influencing senior executives. It starts off with an explanation of site optimization and details the enormous benefits of online testing. Then we learn how to start testing quickly for easy wins, and how to turn these wins into strong business cases for defending allocated marketing dollars for site optimization.

Bob and Casey do a great job explaining how to get value out of Optimize from the very first test, and identify the challenges and hurdles that must be overcome before this value can be quantified.

Here’s the link to the Build Your Business Case for Optimization webinar.

The next webinar in the Optimize series is scheduled for January 21, 2010. It will take a deeper dive into site optimization, and will cover:

• Specific testing types and techniques
• Real-life examples of page tests
• What works/doesn’t work in site optimization testing

Look for an announcement for Optimize Webinar #2 soon. I’ll be sure to update this post with the link when it’s available! In the meantime, be sure to visit the very informative Webtrends’ Optimize blog for short lessons on site optimization.

In the webinar, John, Jennifer and Paul discussed not only the benefits of creating a personalized, internal system for your business using integrated offline customer data with online visitor traffic, but also how to do it. I personally watched this webinar and took copious amounts of handwritten notes—four pages, to be exact—and highly recommend it to any digital marketer wanting to gain a holistic view of ways to drive revenue, improve the customer experience, and reduce costs.

On a related note, Webtrends CEO Alex Yoder’s article on combining offline/online data was recently published in Teradata’s online magazine. In it he mused about the burgeoning need for businesses to recognize that the Internet has forever changed how consumers obtain information about products and services, and that “pulling together the offline and online data—conjoined marketing—will empower companies by letting them analyze every aspect of customer data and, most importantly, act upon it decisively.” Well said, Mr. Yoder!

You can read the article “The next big bang” here.

Go watch the excellent Integrating Online and Enterprise Data webinar and read Alex’s insightful article. You’ll learn a lot about why and how to integrate all phases and types of enterprise customer intelligence.