Chinalytics Longmarch Blog

Web Analytics Wednesday logo

Web Analytics Wednesday is maturing and its very rewarding to see the number of attendees and speakers grow in Beijing and around China. This week will mark a new milestone, as it will be the first event I cannot attend and host in person. On the one hand I am sad not to be able to join and meet all the great analysts who come, on the other had I am excited to see that the event goes on, even if the demands of my job keep me from joining.

This week our guest from DCCI, an up and coming local market research firm, will share their perspective on the Web Analytics market and its importance in understanding the customer journey and brand touch points. You can find some examples of their research and opinion online.

• Hu Yanping blog post on “9 Web analysis and optimization development trends”
• DCCI sample on audience insights:  “2009 Nokia brand contact points and customer journey”

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 DCCI’s Hu Yanping and Fu Zhihua  as well as 40 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 Nov. 11th

Related articles by Zemanta

• Beijing Web Analytics Wednesday: 99click CEO Experience Sharing (longmarch.chinalytics.com)

The topics I have been struggling with most in my Google Analytics Individual Certification exam was regular expressions or Regex, because honestly I had never used them in my work with GA, ever. The exam forced me to beef up my knowledge (which is still pretty shaky), but now I keep on discovering new uses or Regex every day.

One of the simplest applications or RegEx in Google Analytics is the Filter that GA displays are the bottom of every list.

Usually you would just enter a keyword to narrow down the items in the list. Google gives your two standard options “containing” and “not containing”.  Pretty limited, huh? Regular expressions allow you to significantly boost the power of this filter.

Say I want to check how many of my visitors come to my little blog using  vendor name of WA tool as keywords, say “Omniture“, “Webtrends” and “Google”. Using the RegEx “Or” operator “|” (not capital I, but |), the query looks this “Omniture|Webtrends|Google”.

Pretty cool, right? This is especially helpful in the Keywords report, for example to catch various spellings of a brands term, bout works just as well in any other report that allows you to filter. Most popular pages? Sure. Length of Visit? Sadly, no.

You can also find queries that start with a specific term (e.g. “^Omniture”)  and end with a specific (e.g. “Omniture$”) term using RegEx.

And last but not least, remember that Google Analytics’ filters are greedy. The “containing” filter will show you any list item that contains the search term (Broad match), which can be pretty annoying at times. So always remember your RegEx when you want the exact matches. Combining the “begins with” and “ends with” expressions from above, the exact match for my “Omniture” search term looks like this: “^Omniture$”

Good luck playing around with this.

For more information on RegEx (well at least a little more) you can go to the Google Analytics’ Help section posts What are regular expressions?. Or get a deep dive at  this great resource on the Lunametrics blog. Thanks Robin for putting this together.

Any questions or comments? Please let me know in the comments or by email.

Best,

Florian

Related articles by Zemanta

• Florian just passed the Google Analytics Individual Certification (longmarch.chinalytics.com)
• Regular Expressions, Your Job Requires Them – Tim Barcz – Devlicio.us (tomaltman.com)

Shanghai Web Analytics

Last week I finally got around to editing my interview with the gracious Min Guo from Shanghaiwebanalytics.com. They even found a picture of me, attending their Shanghai WAW event. Nice touch.

Take a look and let me know what you think.

Adworld Beijing 2009

The Data Center of the Chinese Internet is organizing their big advertising bash tomorrow at the Grand Hyatt Hotel at Chang’An Jie. You can find more details at www.adworld.ord.cn.

I will be giving a quick presentation at the Web Analytics Salon in the afternoon (3PM to 6PM). While I can’t figure out why people in Beijing are so enarmoured with the word “Salon”, it sounds like a fun opportunity to spread the Web Analytics word.

So say hello if you are around.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Web Analytics Wednesday Review: Sinotech Group: Web Analytics Getting Social (longmarch.chinalytics.com)

Yesterday I had the pleasure to host the July WAW here in Beijing with John Wang, Product Manager at Sinotech Group sharing Sinotech’s perspective on Web Analytics and Social Media Analytics. Thanks John for sharing.

While John had only a couple of slides, it was slide 8 (the SinoBuzz dashboard) that caught most attention and started a discussion that lasted almost half an hour. Thanks John for being a great sport answering all the questions in detail (especially the more pesky ones from Paul Denlinger )

Some take aways from the presentation and the discussion:

• The Social Media tracking field is getting crowded, with pioneer CIC, BBS aggregator Daqi, Ogilvy One’s OBuzz and now Sinotech’s SinoBuzz. That’s great news for advertisers and ad agencies. It keeps everyone on their toes
• Sinotech has been working of Sinobuzz for more than one year. Especially the natural language processor part had been tricky, but they are confident that it produces reliable results now.
  FP: Chinese is a very difficult language to interpret with software. None of the natural language processing tools I have seen for Chinese have worked at an acceptable level. I would love to see a more detailed demonstration of Sinotech’s system on a post and aggregated level to understand if they have cracked this particular nut.
• SinoBuzz is working with connectors to plug into BBS, Blog, Social Network, Video sharing and other conversations. The platform is flexible to add other connectors to any upcoming platform or network.
  FP: This flexibility is a clear competitive advantage, given the more static nature of most competitive products.
• SinoBuzz is trying to aggregate unique metrics from various platform
  • #of BBS post, BBS clicks, BBS replies, Post Sentiment
  • #of Blog post, Blog replies, estimates about Blog post PV’s, Blog post sentiment
  • SNS #of Friends, #of status message, #of posts, # of relies, post sentiment
  • etc

  into general metrics like “reputation” and “attitude”.
  FP: I am highly sceptical of this approach since is a) lack transparency b) ignores unique characteristics of different platforms, their audiences and their impact c) uses unreliable third party resources like Alexa to gauge the impact of sources that do not publish reach (PV) data.

• The Sinobuzz dashboard is well designed and provides a good overview of brand performance. Like most dashboards (see Avinash’s Action Dashboard post), it suffers from the lack of analysis and actionable insights.
  FP: A good rule of thumb for any Dashboard: Handle with care. Dashboards without analytics and recommendations usually end up as pretty charts without impact. The key resource is not the dashboard, but an analyst who understands these numbers and your business and can provide actionable insights and recommendations based on that data. John mentioned that there are more reports to dig deeper and it would be great to understand what these reports can do. The critical queastion remains: How does the tool enable brands to take action?

What are your thoughts? Did I miss anything important? Let me know in the comments section.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Defining Social with Usage Data (arnoldit.com)
• Semantic Search Getting Social (marketingpilgrim.com)
• Accidental Measurement And Why We Love Useless Metrics (rohitbhargava.typepad.com)

Avinash Tweet

After doing some research on my GA accounts, I can confirm Avinash’s statement. While the GA interface was not available, data collection was just fine.  I can live with reporting interface issues, but data collection issues would have been lethal.  This is good for Google Analytics and good for its clients, although I would like a bit more transparency on why it worked, so I can be more confident next time Google runs afoul with the authorities in China.

From what I can see, the tracking image call goes to google-analytics.com, not to analytics.google.com, which might have prevented the blocking (which focussed in google.com). Also many of my clients use local instances of the GA tracking code, to improve performance, which can provide some protection as well.

I am looking forward to hearing more details from Google.

Speaker: Dixon Dai 戴政, VP of Marketing at Qunar

Topic: Perspective on Vertical Search Engines – Travel Search Engines & ROI Performance
如何看垂直搜索和旅游搜索的模式及ROI

I have always believed that the application of web analytics is most advanced in industries and verticals that have a direct $$$ interest in the performance of their websites. The travel industry has been on of the first verticals to make e-commerce work in China and as a result travel sites are leading web analytics users as well. The first to share her perspective was Anya Zhao from Air China. This time we are going to hear from Qunar, China’s leading travel search engine. As most e-commerce sites they have to optimize the cost and quality of their traffic as well as the conversion of the traffic on their sites. It will be interesting to learn how they manage that. An additional challenge Qunar has to face is that the final transaction is happening on their partners site, so in order to track real conversions they need data across companies and sites. If you are interested to learn how Qunar solves these challenges…

Please join me and more than 30 other web analytics enthusiasts to learn about web analytics, meet other web analytics enthusiasts and have an all around great time. Bring any friends who might be interested to join our community along as well to:

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.

Address:
Lugas Villa (Description and Map)
朝阳区三里屯北街41号同里后
7 Sanlitun North Street, (right behind ‘3.3 Plaza’ in Sanlitun)

Schedule:
19:45 – Door open
20:15 – 20:45 Presentation
20:45 – 21:00 Q&A Session
21:00 – 22:00 Networking

Please register here to join our event. Looking forward to meeting you on Wednesday June 10th.

For those of you who didn’t have the  March Web Analytics Wednesday Beijing with Google’s Stephanie Hsu take a look at the video posted above.  Its a full recording of the presentation and Q&A session. The presentation last for 32 minutes and then we have 23 minutes of Q&A. Make sure you don’t miss the insightful questions from our audience. For Song Xing’s video of the event take a look here. We understand that image and sound quality are still sub-optimal and are working on it.

For those of you who have never attended a WAW, this is also a great sneak peak, to see if joining us would add value to you. What is missing from the video of course is the great food and the networking. For that you really have to turn up in person.

During the presentation, in front of a record crowd of 60 attendees,  Stephanie focussed on Custom Reports and Advanced Segments. Both are very powerful tools and Stephanie does a great job demonstrating that power. She is showing actual screenshots from GA, which sometimes makes it diffucult to read what is on the slides. This is compoundend by the fact that I had to use an evluation version of a video conversion software to get the video uploaded.

The video was graciously provided by one of our attendees, but neither of us are experts at filming and editing video. Any recommendations and support in the filming and editing process you can provide is highliy appreachited.

What did you think of this month’s WAW? Like it? Hate it? Want better Chinese translation? Let me know in the comments.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Microsoft to shut down adCenter Analytics Beta (downloadsquad.com)
• March Web Analytics Wednesday Beijing with Google’s Stephanie Hsu (longmarch.chinalytics.com)
• New Google Analytics Guide Offers Help for Beginners (searchenginewatch.com)

With a record turnout of 60 attendees for last nights Beijing Web Analytics Wednesday (more details about that, including video!! to follow), we are setting our sights to spreading the WAW goodness to other digital hubs in China. Next stop Shanghai.

We have money:

Local Sponsor: Elliot Ng
Global Sponsor 1: Coremetrics	Global Sponsor 2: Sitespect

We have attendees:

Multiple comment and emails on my and Song Xings blog (Chinese) and in out Inboxes  have asked us about Shanghai events.

What we don’t have is someone who stands up and organizes it.

- Is that you? -

If you are interested, please get in touch with me. I am happy to share my experience and advice. Its not rocket science, it doesn’t take much time nor any money. But its very rewarding, seeing the community grow month by month. Sweet deal, right? So what are you waiting for? Shoot me an email florianpihs[at]gmail[dot]com or leave a comment to this post.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Free Omniture Online Business Optimization workshop in Beijing (March 11th) (longmarch.chinalytics.com)
• February WAW in Beijing: WebTrends at China Mobile with Wu Yong (longmarch.chinalytics.com)
• Upcoming Omniture training in Beijing and Shanghai (longmarch.chinalytics.com)

After all your feedback about the upcoming Omniture training in Beijing (March 17th, 18th) & Shanghai (March 19th, 20th) , Omniture realized it is not enough to provide a in debth 2 day Omnitiure training.  (Yes they are learning )

So, for those of you who want to get a glimps of SiteCatalyst and SearchCenter, or who have specific questions to ask about either tool, Omniture and me are hosting a

- “Free Omniture Online Business Optimization workshop” -

Time:  Wednesday April  March 11th,  3:30PM – 5PM (Thanks Shoji for the correction)
Place: Kerry Center, CBD, 11th floor, Regus offices

The workshop will focus in Omniture Site Catalyst and Search Center and will be lead by as Omniture Sales engineer.  It will cover the basics of both tools in the first hour and aims to answer attendees questions in following 30 min.

Of course this is by no means an in depth training (For that we still have to pay ), but it should be an insightful afternoon nevertheless, for those of us working with Omniture’s tools, and those who aim to do that in the future.

See you at tomorrows WAW!

Related articles by Zemanta

• March Web Analytics Wednesday Beijing with Google’s Stephanie Hsu (longmarch.chinalytics.com)
• Upcoming Omniture training in Beijing and Shanghai (longmarch.chinalytics.com)