Chinalytics Longmarch Blog

2009 is slowly running out of steam, but the Beijing Web Analytics Wednesday is moving from strength to strength. After a huge event in November, where more than 70 guests listened to DCCI sharing their research about the state of the industry, we starting off December with a presentation by Jackson Huang , who is leading Gridsum’s development team to expand the capabilities of their Web Analytics Tool Web Dissector.

Two month ago Gridsum’s CEO Guosheng QI and Michael Xu who runs Gridsum’s Marketing and Operations gave me a private demo of their tool. I walked away very impressed with the tools strong usability, the broad range of functions as well as tools flexibility to run custom reports and segments on the fly. So far Web Dissector is the strongest local tool I have seen, and it will certainly give  Omniture, WebTrends and Google Analytics a run for their money on China.

Always remember though, that it is rarely the tools that drive business results. Its committed, smart and creative people using these tools, that deliver results. To meet such people and to skill up your own team, join us on Wednesday, December 9th.

Speaker Introduction

Jackson Huang co-founded the Tsinghua Software Industry Association with Guosheng QI and other alumni in 2005, and was responsible for technology development and project monitoring. After Gridsum Technology was formed, Mr. Huang took charge of company’s technology roadmap, product structure, R&D, and project management.

Mr. Huang graduated from Tsinghua University in 2006 with a software engineering degree. He won the first “Shanda (NASDAQ: SNDA) Cup” China Adolescents gaming software competition.

Address:

Pullman’s Steak (details and map)
Gong Ti Dong Lu Zhongguo Hong Jie Bing 2 Hao,109
Phone: +86 10 8587 1055

Agenda:

Call to Action!

Join Jackson, Wu Yong as well as 50 other web analytics enthusiasts to learn about web analytics, meet cool people and have an all around great time. Bring any friends who might be interested to join our community along as well.

We will have a buffet dinner and soft drinks available for our guests. Be prepared to spend RMB 50 for the evening if you register in advance, and RMB 100 if you visit us without registration. As usual, the knowledge you get in exchange is invaluable.

We are looking forward to meeting you on Wednesday December. 9th

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Just found a note to myself from last month. It said “If you don’t write up the event review immediately, you will never do it.” So here we go, no bad consciousness this month.
As usually a colorful band of web analyst as sympathizers met up at Club Camp for a merry get together. This time we had the honor to host a presentation by Song Jie, CEO of Banru a local web analytics vendor. They position their product Web -IA as direct competitor to the likes of WebTrends and Omniture, so this promised to be an interesting presentation.

Presentation on Web-IA
This summary will necessary a bit limited since your truly is not as good in Chinese as he should be. What you read here is often only possible through the kind support of WAW attended who help with the translation.

• Web IA started as early as 2001 to provide basic analytics solutions.
• Multiple versions of their products compete is several market segments from medium to high end. In the high end Song Jie believed their feature set outstrips Omniture.
  While I believe this to be a very aggressive claim, their impressive client list seems an evidence of their local success. Song Jie especially highlighted their partnership with Microsoft’s Service, who implemented Web-IA at several corporate clients.
• While none of the attendees was a user of the product, we could agree that have a strong engineering team in town is a strong competitive advantage. Song Jie commented that their tech support team is able to provide custom reports within 24h after a client request.
• Web IA is based on a web interface, and does sport direct data warehouse access, for custom reports their rely on their tech support and engineering team.
• Web IA can be integrated with various BI tools. While it lacks standard API’s, their engineering team has several standard implementations that can be customized to client needs.

Attendees
With about 19 attendees the event size is stabilizing. Interestingly enough the attendees rotate quite a lot. We have a core group of 7 – 9 people who are there every time and some 25 – 30 people who join once in a while. Another interesting trend is the growth of attendees that are not web analysts but advertisers. I see this as an encouraging trend, although the discussion are more detailed with fellow analysts

Discussion
This time discussion were a bit short, due to the late start of the event. After some brainstorming we agreed to change the format a bit. Instead of a formal dinner set up, we will sent the food up in a buffet arrangement, so we walk around and talk to each other. That should facilitate communication and discussion.

Please use the comment section for detailed feedback and idea what we can do better. If you want to join our illustrious line up of speakers, please also drop me a not. We are very interested in case studies and sample analytics reports. Vendors are also welcome to present their products.

So long and until next month.
Florian