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Casual Articles - Interview With Avinash Kaushik, Author of Occam's Razor
When you buy a franchise opportunity, you are buying much more than a just a business. A business which stands a higher chance of success compared to people who choose to start a business on their own. You are also buying into a business which has strict control and regulations as to what you can and can not do.The franchisor will insist on certain quality standards being maintained. This is so that the end consumers receive a high standard product delivered in a way that they are accustomed to at other outlets.You will be allowed to make small changes in the way you run your business compared to other franchisees, but the business will have to operate to a high standard and all the major decisions on the management of the business have already been taken.Why is it like this? The franchisor has probably spent many years if not decades creating a business that works and can be sold successfully as a franchise. They have usually invested heavily in marketing materials, advertising campaigns, shop floor layouts logos and branding.A poor franchisee can have a very detrimental affect on the group as a whole. The press loves it when something goes wrong in business and is quick to spread the news. It is essential for the franchisor to spend some quality time on the poor performing franchisees as the franchise network
Hmm…. I don’t think my friend Ian Thomas has quite the luxury to build whatever I want, but let’s assume he does. J
I hope that with Gatineau Microsoft figures out exactly who their target audience is and then delivers a tool exactly and specifically just for that audience. Being all things to all people means being nothing to anyone. I guess I am saying I hope their tool does not have a billion standard reports out of the box, just the six that their target audience needs. Atleast initially.
Efficient segmentation. In four clicks (see I am generous!) anyone should be able to segment out traffic from the search engines or from a top referring url /’s or visitors who see x number of pages or come on a particular campaign (whose id is in the url or cookie). It is very hard to dumb down the ability to do intelligent segmentation, yet that is the key to finding actionable insights.
Some useful reporting for Search Engine Optimizati
Many a business meal starts with a soup course. Unless you have already begun by munching on the bread, this is your first opportunity to demonstrate your table manners-to impress or un-impress-your dining companions.Choosing the right spoon is step number one. If the table has been preset, your soup spoon will be the large round or oval one to the far right of your place setting. If the table has not been fully set, the server will bring your spoon with the soup. I recently found myself on a hunt for my soup spoon after the waiter had brought the bowl. There was no soup spoon to the right of the place setting and it didn't seem to be anywhere else close by. Just before confessing that I was without a spoon, I spotted a handle sticking out from under the oversized soup bowl. So check the plate first before you give up.With soup spoon in hand, spoon the soup away from you towards the opposite side of the bowl. If a bit of the liquid should fall from the spoon this will ensure that it will drop into the bowl and not on the front of your nice business attire. Sip your soup quietly from the side of the spoon. Slurping is never acceptable.No matter how hot the soup, at no point should you blow on it to cool it off. You may lift a spoonful slightly level with the bowl and hold it for a few seconds while it cools o
1. You've been in the field of web analytics for quite some time, did you just wake up one day and think to yourself that this is something that you wanted to do, or were you thrown into the role and simply adapted to it?
At my last job with DirecTV, Sr. Manager for Enterprise Analytics, I had small amounts of exposure to Web Analytics (someone supplied log file parsed numbers into the dashboard). When I interviewed for the job at Intuit (Manager for Web Analytics) I was quite excited about the possibility of taking all my experience in Decision Support and apply it to a 100% exclusive web environment.
There is something so beautiful and scary and challenging and fun about data on the web. It was too hard to pass up. But it would be fair to say that when I took the job at Intuit I had no idea what “web analytics” was, I had not yet had the fortune to have used any web analytics application. Blaire Hansen, my hiring manager, certainly made a huuuge leap of faith in hiring me.
It has been a amazing ride and yes to answer your question I have simply adapted to it, but since my post MBA experience has been almost solely focused on Decision Support Systems I think I have brought all the learnings from traditional data warehousing and business intelligence and applied it to my current role.
2. What problems if any do you foresee with the implementation of Web 2.0 technologies such as AJAX and the explosion of tab based browsing? Are you concerned about problems of people keeping tabs open when they are not actively browsing the site?
I have blogged about the fact that slowly but surely the page paradigm is dying. That is not saying that the big problem is that the page view metric is going to be crap. It is more that currently almost all web analytics applications are constructed, from an architecture perspective, on the fact that a page view has to happen and all things go from there.
The challenge with AJAX or Flash or RIA’s is that the page view model does not work (remember this is more from a data capture and data analysis perspective). I have blogged about (http://snipurl.com/1al4p) moving to an “event” based data capture and analysis model. The challenge for the web analytics vendors is to change their underlying architectures to accommodate for a event based model and not just try to stuff events into page views because that won’t work in the long term.
There is a bigger challenge from Ajax / RIA’s for business users. We are used to slapping a tag on the page and expecting most data we need to show up. With web 2.0 we are going to have to think way up front exactly what we want to measure, what is success and then instrument these new experience in Ajax or RIA’s to give us the data we need. Most companies and practitioners are not yet prepared for this mental shift.
In terms of tabbed browsing, this simply exposes one more limitation of clickstream data to ultimate actionable insight. Even with tabbed browsing it is hard to make sense of clickstream data. My personal point of view with tabbed browsing the order in which a visitor sees something and follows a “path” is fairly messed up. Depending on how your sessions are initiated in terms of your analytics apps this could also screw up other reports such as referring urls etc.
But it is important to note that if you have a tab open and as long as you are not auto-reloading it, the web analytics application will terminate your session after 30 mins of inactivity and that is not a biggie. Tabbed browsing, and its related impact on clickstream data, is yet another reminder that each website owner should have a mechanism to collect qualitative data (http://snipurl.com/1al54) and to have a Trinity mindset (http://snipurl.com/1al53). Without that they will not truly be able to get actionable insights from their data.
3. What tools, features, and reports would you like to see in the upcoming Microsoft Gatineau product?
Hmm…. I don’t think my friend Ian Thomas has quite the luxury to build whatever I want, but let’s assume he does. J
I hope that with Gatineau Microsoft figures out exactly who their target audience is and then delivers a tool exactly and specifically just for that audience. Being all things to all people means being nothing to anyone. I guess I am saying I hope their tool does not have a billion standard reports out of the box, just the six that their target audience needs. Atleast initially.
Efficient segmentation. In four clicks (see I am generous!) anyone should be able to segment out traffic from the search engines or from a top referring url /’s or visitors who see x number of pages or come on a particular campaign (whose id is in the url or cookie). It is very hard to dumb down the ability to do intelligent segmentation, yet that is the key to finding actionable insights.
Some useful reporting for Search Engine Optimizatio
The wire EDM manufacturing business is becoming popular, as the system has provided a significant growth in manufacturing sector. The rising demand for the wire EDM has attracted many big entrepreneurs in the business. It facilitates the achievement of the desired speed in machine cutting.Companies in China and Taiwan are leading the race in the business. One of them is Accutex Technologies Co. Ltd., from Taiwan that holds a good reputation in the industry. Accutex Technologies are manufactures of quality precision CNC machine tools, CNC wire cutting machines type submarines, flushing type cutting machines, EDM machines, wire EDM machining, wire cut EDM and CNC machines. It has worldwide export markets with annual sales of $ 2,000,000. The company favors USD as the currency in transactions.Oscar EDM Company Ltd is another leading company from Taiwan that specializes in the manufacturing of EDM drilling machines, EDM machining, wire EDM machining, wire cut EDM, electrical discharge machines, CNC EDM, CNC wire EDM machinery and spark erosion.Similarly Ocean Techologies Co., Ltd is another Taiwan company with worldwide exports in Wire EDM. Ocean Techologies is also well known for supplies in ceramic guide, electrode tubes, instrument equipments and spare parts.Shenzhen Joint Industry Co., Ltd is one of leading manu
It has been a amazing ride and yes to answer your question I have simply adapted to it, but since my post MBA experience has been almost solely focused on Decision Support Systems I think I have brought all the learnings from traditional data warehousing and business intelligence and applied it to my current role.
2. What problems if any do you foresee with the implementation of Web 2.0 technologies such as AJAX and the explosion of tab based browsing? Are you concerned about problems of people keeping tabs open when they are not actively browsing the site?
I have blogged about the fact that slowly but surely the page paradigm is dying. That is not saying that the big problem is that the page view metric is going to be crap. It is more that currently almost all web analytics applications are constructed, from an architecture perspective, on the fact that a page view has to happen and all things go from there.
The challenge with AJAX or Flash or RIA’s is that the page view model does not work (remember this is more from a data capture and data analysis perspective). I have blogged about (http://snipurl.com/1al4p) moving to an “event” based data capture and analysis model. The challenge for the web analytics vendors is to change their underlying architectures to accommodate for a event based model and not just try to stuff events into page views because that won’t work in the long term.
There is a bigger challenge from Ajax / RIA’s for business users. We are used to slapping a tag on the page and expecting most data we need to show up. With web 2.0 we are going to have to think way up front exactly what we want to measure, what is success and then instrument these new experience in Ajax or RIA’s to give us the data we need. Most companies and practitioners are not yet prepared for this mental shift.
In terms of tabbed browsing, this simply exposes one more limitation of clickstream data to ultimate actionable insight. Even with tabbed browsing it is hard to make sense of clickstream data. My personal point of view with tabbed browsing the order in which a visitor sees something and follows a “path” is fairly messed up. Depending on how your sessions are initiated in terms of your analytics apps this could also screw up other reports such as referring urls etc.
But it is important to note that if you have a tab open and as long as you are not auto-reloading it, the web analytics application will terminate your session after 30 mins of inactivity and that is not a biggie. Tabbed browsing, and its related impact on clickstream data, is yet another reminder that each website owner should have a mechanism to collect qualitative data (http://snipurl.com/1al54) and to have a Trinity mindset (http://snipurl.com/1al53). Without that they will not truly be able to get actionable insights from their data.
3. What tools, features, and reports would you like to see in the upcoming Microsoft Gatineau product?
Hmm…. I don’t think my friend Ian Thomas has quite the luxury to build whatever I want, but let’s assume he does. J
I hope that with Gatineau Microsoft figures out exactly who their target audience is and then delivers a tool exactly and specifically just for that audience. Being all things to all people means being nothing to anyone. I guess I am saying I hope their tool does not have a billion standard reports out of the box, just the six that their target audience needs. Atleast initially.
Efficient segmentation. In four clicks (see I am generous!) anyone should be able to segment out traffic from the search engines or from a top referring url /’s or visitors who see x number of pages or come on a particular campaign (whose id is in the url or cookie). It is very hard to dumb down the ability to do intelligent segmentation, yet that is the key to finding actionable insights.
Some useful reporting for Search Engine Optimizati
As a manager our role is to:1. Establish the vision, or our contribution to the vision.2. Establish the plan and forecast for our management contribution, be it $1million or $1billion.3. Gain endorsement of the plan and forecast, by the vision holders.4. Manage the plan and reality to the vision-contribution.This is very simple on paper.Assuming we have achieved the first three, let’s focus on the fourth as it is vitally important.Firstly, too many managers make a subtle twist here and manage the deliverables to the plan forgetting that the vision is the ultimate goal! To tweak the plan as we go, means we may readily exceed our contribution to the vision within the time frame. This is a wonderful over achievement, there to for the having, if our eyes, ears and hearts are open to the possibility!My client had a plan to deliver sales of budget for the year. Nearing the end of Q3 they found they had exceeded budget substantially and could set a new target 25% over the previous budget. All it required to be done was to continue to sell at the same levels. There had been no product withdrawals by the competition, no category killers by their own company, just an extraordinary and consistent performance.Her focus was on the vision not the plan, the plan would have enabled her to
The challenge with AJAX or Flash or RIA’s is that the page view model does not work (remember this is more from a data capture and data analysis perspective). I have blogged about (http://snipurl.com/1al4p) moving to an “event” based data capture and analysis model. The challenge for the web analytics vendors is to change their underlying architectures to accommodate for a event based model and not just try to stuff events into page views because that won’t work in the long term.
There is a bigger challenge from Ajax / RIA’s for business users. We are used to slapping a tag on the page and expecting most data we need to show up. With web 2.0 we are going to have to think way up front exactly what we want to measure, what is success and then instrument these new experience in Ajax or RIA’s to give us the data we need. Most companies and practitioners are not yet prepared for this mental shift.
In terms of tabbed browsing, this simply exposes one more limitation of clickstream data to ultimate actionable insight. Even with tabbed browsing it is hard to make sense of clickstream data. My personal point of view with tabbed browsing the order in which a visitor sees something and follows a “path” is fairly messed up. Depending on how your sessions are initiated in terms of your analytics apps this could also screw up other reports such as referring urls etc.
But it is important to note that if you have a tab open and as long as you are not auto-reloading it, the web analytics application will terminate your session after 30 mins of inactivity and that is not a biggie. Tabbed browsing, and its related impact on clickstream data, is yet another reminder that each website owner should have a mechanism to collect qualitative data (http://snipurl.com/1al54) and to have a Trinity mindset (http://snipurl.com/1al53). Without that they will not truly be able to get actionable insights from their data.
3. What tools, features, and reports would you like to see in the upcoming Microsoft Gatineau product?
Hmm…. I don’t think my friend Ian Thomas has quite the luxury to build whatever I want, but let’s assume he does. J
I hope that with Gatineau Microsoft figures out exactly who their target audience is and then delivers a tool exactly and specifically just for that audience. Being all things to all people means being nothing to anyone. I guess I am saying I hope their tool does not have a billion standard reports out of the box, just the six that their target audience needs. Atleast initially.
Efficient segmentation. In four clicks (see I am generous!) anyone should be able to segment out traffic from the search engines or from a top referring url /’s or visitors who see x number of pages or come on a particular campaign (whose id is in the url or cookie). It is very hard to dumb down the ability to do intelligent segmentation, yet that is the key to finding actionable insights.
Some useful reporting for Search Engine Optimizati
Expressing your wants feelings and opinions clearly and effectively is half of communication, and the other half is listening and understanding what others communicate to us.However, when we talk of communication, we often think of how we express ourselves, and forget the importance of listening. The result is clear. Researches show us that although 50%-75% of our daily communication time is spent listening, but we listen at only a 25% efficiency level. In other word 75 % of our communication efforts are: misunderstood, misinterpreted, rejected, disliked, or distorted.Many problems that arise in our interactions with customers can be attributed to poor listening skills. Listening is not same as hearing. Listening involves truly understanding the customer. “The single most important principle in the field of interpersonal relations is this: Seek first to understand, then to be understood. Most people listen, not with the intent to understand, but with the intent to reply”. Steven R. CoveyIf listening means understanding your customers, how often do you make an effort to truly understand your customers? In my trainings I show participants a picture of 2 cars, and ask them to recommend me a car. Believe me; they have always suggested me a car, without asking me a single question. How can one recommend me a car, without
In terms of tabbed browsing, this simply exposes one more limitation of clickstream data to ultimate actionable insight. Even with tabbed browsing it is hard to make sense of clickstream data. My personal point of view with tabbed browsing the order in which a visitor sees something and follows a “path” is fairly messed up. Depending on how your sessions are initiated in terms of your analytics apps this could also screw up other reports such as referring urls etc.
But it is important to note that if you have a tab open and as long as you are not auto-reloading it, the web analytics application will terminate your session after 30 mins of inactivity and that is not a biggie. Tabbed browsing, and its related impact on clickstream data, is yet another reminder that each website owner should have a mechanism to collect qualitative data (http://snipurl.com/1al54) and to have a Trinity mindset (http://snipurl.com/1al53). Without that they will not truly be able to get actionable insights from their data.
3. What tools, features, and reports would you like to see in the upcoming Microsoft Gatineau product?
Hmm…. I don’t think my friend Ian Thomas has quite the luxury to build whatever I want, but let’s assume he does. J
I hope that with Gatineau Microsoft figures out exactly who their target audience is and then delivers a tool exactly and specifically just for that audience. Being all things to all people means being nothing to anyone. I guess I am saying I hope their tool does not have a billion standard reports out of the box, just the six that their target audience needs. Atleast initially.
Efficient segmentation. In four clicks (see I am generous!) anyone should be able to segment out traffic from the search engines or from a top referring url /’s or visitors who see x number of pages or come on a particular campaign (whose id is in the url or cookie). It is very hard to dumb down the ability to do intelligent segmentation, yet that is the key to finding actionable insights.
Some useful reporting for Search Engine Optimizati
Bronchitis is identified as being either chronic or acute. Acute bronchitis usually is limited into ration to anywhere from a few days to a week or two. It's often accompanied by flu like symptoms. Once ill, you can expect to have several days, with limited or no productivity, and even more time not performing at your best. While chronic bronchitis tends to last months or even years, the symptoms are much less pronounced and debilitating.Of these two basic bronchitis categories, acute bronchitis is typically associated with colds and flu like symptoms. The symptoms of acute bronchitis include:1. A Feeling of Tightness or Constriction in Your Chest2. Usually a Sore Throat3. Congestion4. Wheezing and Difficulty Breathing5. A Low to Mid Grade FeverIn a business situation, you often see many people coming to work ill claiming it's all for the good of the company. While I'm certain they have the best of intentions, viral influenza (flu) can be spread through direct person-to-person contact or indirectly in the air and on hard surfaces. This means that if someone who's sick coughs and doesn't cover their mouth, they can put everyone at the workplace at risk for contracting the illness.So consider someone who dutifully covers her mouth when she coughs. While in the break room,
Hmm…. I don’t think my friend Ian Thomas has quite the luxury to build whatever I want, but let’s assume he does. J
I hope that with Gatineau Microsoft figures out exactly who their target audience is and then delivers a tool exactly and specifically just for that audience. Being all things to all people means being nothing to anyone. I guess I am saying I hope their tool does not have a billion standard reports out of the box, just the six that their target audience needs. Atleast initially.
Efficient segmentation. In four clicks (see I am generous!) anyone should be able to segment out traffic from the search engines or from a top referring url /’s or visitors who see x number of pages or come on a particular campaign (whose id is in the url or cookie). It is very hard to dumb down the ability to do intelligent segmentation, yet that is the key to finding actionable insights.
Some useful reporting for Search Engine Optimization. I love free traffic and with all the changes (especially at Google, such as increased “personalization”) the PPC gravy train is going to pause. SEO will become more effective at getting the right kinds of traffic yet today most tools pay lip service to the measurement of the results of SEO efforts, all you can do is measure organic traffic and if it goes up (that is hardly a measure of SEO). I hope Gatineau can at least tap into the MSN data and providing efficient reporting for atleast MSN SEO efforts.
Ok maybe I will ask for a reporting feature. I hope that all the reports will show one extra time period by default. For example show eight days in a “weekly” trend and thirteen months in a “yearly” trend. Seems like a small thing but most web analytics tools are not great at giving context, and context is king. If you look at a eight day trend you could compare this Monday to last Monday and get a feeling for if you are doing better or worse this Monday, with most tools you don’t see last Monday. Ditto for this month vs. same month last year. It gives context to your past performance and is a “internal benchmark” that can frame current performance. Might not scream answers at you but will get you to ask the right “why” and “what” questions.
There is nothing uniquely Microsoft Gatineau about the above three requests, though if they are really starting with a open mind it might be easier for them to consider requests from random bloggers such as myself.
4. Do you foresee a decline in the major players in the web analytics field such as Omniture and WebSideStory based upon free web analytics packages, or do you believe that they fulfill a niche and will remain?
It is important to realize that I am a practitioner. I am not a vendor, I not a consultant, I am not a analyst from Forrester or Jupiter or any other esteemed organizations. In as much I probably have no idea what I am talking about when I answer this question.
One overall fact to consider is that the web analytics space is growing by leaps and bounds, driven by the fact that the web in general becoming a medium that is increasing been monetized (to huge amounts). At the moment anyone in the field can do great because web analytics is a baby and the there are way too many people who are falling in love with this cute baby. Near term there is hardly a worry on the horizon.
Longer term both Google and Microsoft will prove to be excellent disruptors. If they provide solutions that are value add (rather than being YATR - Yet Another Tsunami of Reports) and keep improving, as their deep pockets would enable them to, then they should own the small to mid sized clients. There is really no need for you to pay for clickstream reporting and some of the always required analysis.
That leaves some of the mid-market and the “high end”. These will continue to be with the paid-vendors for some time for a whole host of reasons, for the next couple years at the minimum. After that the paid-vendors that and provide more than clickstream analysis (or indeed web analytics) will thrive (those that enable what I call the Trinity Strategy - http://snipurl.com/1al53). Others will feel perhaps more than bearable pressure from the for free vendors and get squeezed.
In a few years it will be hard to find vendors who will just do traditional web analytics and will be paid for those services. There I have gone out on a limb!
5. We know that you've become quite a football fan, but what else do you do to unwind after a long day besides blogging and answering questions?
By the time I am done with the blogging, and answering atleast twenty fairly detailed emails from the blog readers, it is usually around 0100 hrs and that is rather late! So I unwind by going to sleep. J
With a full time job, the blog, emails from blog readers, the book, speaking engagements and seminars, two small kids and travel required by business it is really tough to find time. No tv for the last year, the super bowl game was the only game I saw all year long (and boy was it nice).
I suppose for me unwinding is writing my blog. It is way more work than I ever imagined (approximately twenty hours a week at least). But when
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