Chinalytics Longmarch Blog

Those of you that cannot attend our Web Analytics Wednesday event next Thursday, do not despair. The folks from LexAd are running a Google Analytics workshop in Shanghai on April 22nd and May 27th. This is not the first time they do that, just the first time I notice Thanks Sidney for pointing this out! If any one of my readers has attended their workshop before, please let me know how it went. The comment section is the perfect place 

Given the great interest in the WebTrends drinks / dinner event, I am
happy to announce the next Web Analytics Wednesday (on a Thursday) for
Thursday April 3rd / 8PM – 10PM. Sponsored by Web Analytics
Demystified Inc., I have invited Google’s Zhou Yang to present a quick
introduction to Google Analytics (15 min) to start off the discussion.
Given the great interest in tools, I am planning future sessions for
WebTrends, Omniture, SinoTechMedia and other vendors in upcoming
months. Please do recommend other vendors you are aware of, I am happy to add more to the list.

Time: Thursday April 3rd / 8PM – 10PM
Location: South Beauty (Dong Zhi Men branch)


Please RSVP on the Web Analytics Wednesday website or by commenting to this post.

In the most well attended web analytics event in Beijing yet, our group of local Web Analytics practitioners met WebTrends‘ Sean Browning and Colby Cavanaugh in Bed Bar to talk about WebTrends activities in China.
While this post cannot do justice to the rich discussions going on during the event (you have to BE THERE to get the full flavor), I will try to summarize to key points here, as a quick reference to all those who attended as well as for those of you who could not join (but hopefully drop by next time).

Attendees

• Our honored guests from WebTrends (including Ronghai Consulting, their local reseller)
• Agencies: MRM Worldwide, Ogilvy One, DMG
• Clients and Entrepreneurs: Nokia China Interface Lab, Jonathan Zhou, Olandio (ex Baidu)

Topics

• WebTrends China Strategy:
  WebTrends is managing its global expansion through a regional partner network. Sean and Colby’s reason to visit Beijing was a regional North Asia parter event, hosted by Ronghai. WebTrends sees this as a key advantage to drive a fast global roll-out with localized service, quick response times and fast adoption of local business practices. It certainly seems to have worked in China, judging from the client list on Ronghai’s website (which interestingly uses Google Analytics, instead of WebTrends) and my experience with their response times and unique set of trainings and services.
• WebTrends & Double byte characters:
  One support questions that kept popping up was WebTrends’ support for double byte characters. We had discussions with our clients that indicated WebTrends might have problems tracking pages that have certain double byte characters in their page title. Neither Ronghai nor the WebTrends team could report mayor tracking issues (apart  from some display issues in the interface). Some problems might occur based on customized JavaScripts used for certain clients. As with Omniture SiteCatalyst, customization can be a blessing and a curse. We will be looking into that.
• Clients in China:
  While Ronghai’s client list is impressive (incl. China Mobile, China Telecom, Air China, China Merchants Bank), proving that Web Analytics is much more prevalent than I imagined, actual use of the tool is still limited. Most clients do have a reporting infrastructure in place, but rarely optimize their site or advertising based on analytics insights.
• Companies that are not clients (surprisingly):
  Non of the larger local e-commerce players or portals in currently a WebTrends client (nor could I detect any other standard solution using WASP). Most of the large sites use custom made solutions based on server logs
  and Oracle databases. Maybe I should not be surprised, neither Yahoo, nor Google nor MSN use standard tools.
• WebTrends is a strong supporter of Web Analytics Wednesday’s. With Eric Peterson being  a WebTrends alumni, thats hardly surprising. The next question through is, when will WebTrends take of Web Analytics
  Demystified’s role as WAW Beijing sponsor? I will keep you posted on this one
• Last but not least, WebTrends is going coming back to China. Rest assured that I will let you know more details, when the time comes.

Please do let me know if I missed a key point of the discussion, or got something wrong (it has been known to happen). The comment section is the best place for that.

About two weeks ago I blogged a question about WebTrends in China,
and following up on that questions opened a whole new perspective on
web analytics in China for me. It turned out that Webtrends indeed has
be present in China since 2000, as stated in this press release. Ronghai Consulting is distributing its solution in China and providing training for its local accounts. This is the kind of blow to my world view
that I like to see more often! There is actual web analytics life
outside the small agency planet I exist on. Unbeknown to your ignorant
correspondent, Ronghai has licensed WebTrends to several large state
owned enterprises like China Mobile and China Telecoms (HQ and regional
telecoms). Since the company focussed on reselling software, all of
these installations are local installations, in contrast to the SAAS /
On Demand services WebTrends like to sell these days. This modus
operandi might actually benefit data accuracy, since the data does not
need to travel to the WebTrends servers outside the great firewall.
Another interesting story is the training Ronghai provides for WebTrends, charging local rates (RMB 1K/day/person, less for groups) including

• WebTrends installation
• WebTrends SDC Java script tagging skills
• Campaign tracking configuration skills

This seems to be a good benchmark for Omniture and Baidu
in their effort to broaden he base of web analytics users in China. It
is also a great reminder to me to continue honing my radar for web
analytics activity in China.

Web Analytics is becoming serious business in Beijing these days. After I hosted Omniture for a dinner last month, me and Wu Yong (ex. Ronghai Consulting) will host drinks with WebTrends next Tuesday. Please join the fun at Bed Bar. (http://www.cityweekend.com.cn/beijing/listings/nightlife/bars/has/bed-bar/). Please do RSVP by replying to this post or sending me an email, so we can reserve a private room that fits everyone. Please feel free to bring everybody else you know to be interested in Web Analytics and WebTrends.

Best,
Florian

Omniture is coming to China. Big Time, judging from the announcement of the Baidu strategic cooperation last week. Or is it? I am still not sure. Having dinner with the Omniture
shortly before the announcement, they sounded more cautious that that.
With good reasons, I believe, since Omniture’s products and existing
price structure are not a good match for the mainland market. Yes,
there are sophisticated advertisers in the market. Yes, the market is
growing. But with Google Analytics as a free alternative and WebTrends
with established in the market since 2000 (more on that later), it
seems like an uphill battle rather than a quick win that analysts seem to believe in. China? Yeah! Baidu? Double yeah!!
But what does this partnership mean, for Omniture users, Baidu
advertisers and  shareholders in both companies? Lets take a look at
each group and try get some perspective

Current Omniture users
For
the select few Omniture users in China, this is good news. For the
longest time Omniture SiteCatalyst was unable to analyze and display
Chinese Baidu search terms correctly. They would show up as apparently
random double byte characters and you had to click through to the
original SERP to identify the term. This also lead to wrong popular
keyword results and was a general pain in the “you know where”. In the
run up to the announcement, Omniture has implemented a custom filter
for Baidu that solves the issue for all implementations that rely on
the standard Omniture JS tracking code. Since Omniture is highly
customizable, and customization often required custom JS codes, alas
that does not include us yet *sigh*. But there light at the end of the
tunnel. Does it mean that we will spend more money on Baidu? No. But it
means that we are finally able to do some meaningful SEM optimization
with Omniture. I would be curious to learn for Omniture Search Center
users in China how this announcement has impacted their business.

Baidu Advertisers
In the press release enable Haoyu Shen, Baidu.com’s
vice president of business operations is quoted saying that the partnership will enable “Baidu.com advertisers to increase the
performance of their online campaigns, by integrating [Baidu's] search
metrics with Omniture [...] Online marketers will not only be
able to measure campaigns but also improve conversion by making the
end-to-end search experience more relevant. Companies tapping the
Chinese market should now be able to reach Baidu.com customers more
easily.” That
sounds nice and makes sense, to a degree. Integrating search metrics
with web analytics (post click) data does allow effective optimization.
My question is: What is new? This integration was possible before with
Omniture SiteCatalyst as well as other tool including WebtTrends,
Google Analytics and Baidu’s own Tongji.
It will be interesting to see how this cooperation influences the
adoption of Tongji and how Omniture will adjust its business model to
persuade current Baidu advertisers to use SiteCatalyst or Search
Center. No details have been announced yet, but let please let me know
if you know more.
At the very least, the cooperation provides a great channel for
Omniture to work through. Search Engine advertisers tend to be more ROI
and conversion focussed and are natural targets for Web Analytics
vendors to go after. So if you do spend serious money on Baidu expect a
call from your friendly Omniture China / Baidu contact soon, explaining
the advantages of Web Analytics and SiteCatalyst /
Search Center. That could provide a significant boost for Web Analytics
in China, but the most sophisticated tool is useless, if you don’t have experienced analysts to interpret the data. Omniture and Baidu have their work cut out for them, and training web analyst has to be their first priority.

Omniture Shareholders
Omniture Shareholders are the group that has already seen an
immediate benefit of the cooperation, with the stock price jumping 6%
after the announcement, they have already made a tidy sum. I am not
building a sophisticated discounted cash flow model here, but for a
jump like that you need to assume a significant incremental
contribution to the bottom line from China (say 10%) in the near to
medium term (3-5 years). Based on my experience and the experience of
the eBay’s and Google’s of the world this seems to be rather
optimistic.

Baidu Shareholders
The partnership with Omniture is a signal for Baidu shareholders
saying. “Our advertisers become more sophisticated and experienced.
They take more control of their online marketing activities and look
for ROI. Some of them so sophisticated in fact that they need web
analytics tools that are more sophisticated than our own free analytics
tool.” If that is truly the case, it is time to break out the
champaign, since such advertised tend to spend a large and growing
share of their ad budget in search. Currently I see only a handful of
businesses that would qualify and see a positive ROI from a large
SiteCatalyst implementation, but I am happy to be proven wrong (please
use the comment section for that )

I am looking forward to learn my readers opinion and insights. So please use the comments section of this post, or send me an email.

So many great news today! First Omniture’s announcement about the Baidu, then the news that Google Analytics has a new Benchmarking function. Lets talk about the GA Benchmarking first, so I can focus on Omniture / Baidu in a longer post during the weekend.

Why Benchmarking?
Reporting is easy, providing actionable recommendation is less so. In an earlier past I recommended a 3 step approach based on answering 3 simple questions:

1. Is this number good or bad?
2. Why is the numbers good or bad?
3. What can we do to improve this metric and is it worth the effort?

In order to answer questions 1 and 2 it is critical to know how well other players (especially competitors) are doing, since comparing just to your own numbers will leave you in bubble without context for question 1 and without best practices for question 2. Find more details in Avinash’s post on competitive intelligence.

Why is this announcement so important for China?
Regular readers of this blog might remember my rants about the lack of benchmarks in China. While you can benchmark you reach (unique visitors) with some accuracy using IResearch’s iUserTracker, key industry benchmarks like CPC, CTR or Bounce rate are unavailable in China. There is not even an industry organization like the IAB that
conceivably could report such numbers. As long as you don’t have a large sample of clients or long experience in the market, you are out of luck (just barely avoided a 4 letter word here)

How useful will it be?
Well, that depends. I just singed up for the service (you need to agree to share you own data anonymously first) and will share more comments in the future, but I see a number of limitations.

• The benchmark needs to be relevant to my industry, GA allows you to choose among a number of verticals to address this issue. So the value will depend on how close this match is.
• The benchmark needs to be relevant to my geography. Most benchmarks are widely different in China than they are in the US (or in Japan, or in Germany for that matter). So far it seems this problem is not addressed. That is a key weakness for us poor web analytics souls in China an without this feature, GA benchmark will remain a nice graph is the system.

Yours truly will of course immediately get in touch with his local Google resources and see what he can did up. Stay tuned for more. [Update: My friends at Google confirmed that the benchmark is global. No luck for the wicked]

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• Best of 2008: Web Analytics (myventurepad.com)