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Will You Add? - Q&A With Stephen Oachs, Technical Director of VisiStat - Web Analytics Trends Discussed
You have arrived at your appointment for a job interview two hours early because you didn’t want to be late. Now you have found the place where the company told you they would meet you for the interview but you have time on your hands. What should you do? Go across the street for another cup of coffee to calm your nerves? Read the Good Housekeeping magazine sitting on the table in the lobby? Go to the ladies room and look for makeup smudges?You can use this gift of free time to help prepare yourself for the best interview you have ever had. Here is a list of suggestions to make the most of your waiting time.1) DO find the ladies or gents room and take use the facilities. Nothing is more embarrassing than having to excuse yourself to go to the bathroom during an interview. While in the restroom, check your clothing for any stains or run
We’ve also added some security features like Domain Filtering, which uses data authentication to prevent "spoofing," a simple yet insidious trick where hackers simply copy a site's HTML page code and post their own look-alike site. The remaining new features in VisiStat 4.0 are designed to improve the user experience. Friendly Page Naming lets you create and track easy-to-remember page names instead of clumsy URL page descriptors, and QuickNav, a handy little toggle window, lets you jump directly to the VisiStat report you need, when you need it.
Q. Finally, can you offer some insight into where you see the Web Analytics market is headed?
One of the mistakes many salespeople make is that they fail to take the time to study trends, such as:-economic ones-market ones-technology ones-buyer perceptions-product evolution-service needs/expectations-buyer groups-competitor decisionsThere are many more but I am sure you get the point. If you knew what the world was going to be like in five, ten or even twenty years do you see the benefit of positioning yourself today so that you could take advantage of them and experience greater success as these trends come to fruition in the future? I can tell you that over 75 percent of my business today and for the past twenty-five years has come from only five major industries – and I selected those industries in 1973. Was it luck? I am not that lucky. Was it brilliance? I am not that smart.<
I sat down with Stephen Oachs, founder of VisiStat (www.visistat.com), to talk about the future of Web analytics, as well as the newly released VisiStat 4.0.
Q. Stephen, what Web analytics market trends have you seen so far this year?
A. Well, after a bit of a rocky start, the Google acquisition of Urchin and the subsequent release of Google Analytics have created a seismic event in the market. Some of the legacy Web analytics companies that previously offered expensive enterprise reporting packages are now faced with a very serious competitor. Google is essentially giving the very same service away free.
Don’t get me wrong; all of this is good news for companies like VisiStat that have earned their stripes by toughing it out at the low end of the market, especially where education is a big factor in customer acquisition and retention. And Google, with their fine-tuned marketing machine, has generated a ton of interest in the Web reporting space. People who didn’t even know they needed Web reporting are now demanding it. What you have to consider is, Google has everything to gain by offering Web analytics, as they are in the business to sell Pay Per Click ads – but I see it a bit like asking the fox to watch the hen house.
Q. Are you at all concerned about competing in the Web analytics market with titans like Google and WebTrends?
A. Not at all. We let these big players do the hard work of demand creation -- educating people about why Web analytics is so important. Meanwhile, we focus on delivering a valuable service to small- and medium-sized businesses in a way they can use and understand. It’s pretty obvious that if the users don’t comprehend their reports, they miss the full business benefits. And remember, unlike these other companies, VisiStat has always been focused on one thing – providing rich data as fast as humanly possible, in an easy-to-digest format. From a feature point of view, we provide many unique capabilities, like our exclusive StatCasting™, AdCaM™ and PageAlarm™ technology. These are things that even Google doesn’t have yet.
Q. How does VisiStat stack up against enterprise solutions?
A. It’s really apples and oranges. Enterprise solutions address a much different business model, and are tailored toward larger companies with educated staff to interpret the information they provide. VisiStat takes a much different approach, both in the data we provide and the means in which we deliver. VisiStat is very much suited for the small to medium business, where often times our customers are single business owners, or only have small staff, thus they do not have the time to become educated to use an enterprise solution, nor can they reasonably afford one.
Some extremely robust enterprise Web analytic products on the market provide very granular information. These services are perfect for the fortune 1000-type companies. VisiStat’s mission is to service the rest of the market. There were 18 million new domains registered in 2005 and the small business opportunity on the Internet grows every day. We seek to service those customers, which isn’t to say we can’t provide analytics for larger companies – we actually work with many large companies and they love the information VisiStat provides. But our focus is strongly on the small business community.
I guess the best way to sum it up is that Web analytics is not a "one-size-fits all" service, therefore, we provide VisiStat Web Analytics side by side with other tracking services. For instance, a marketing group may use VisiStat to monitor visitor traffic, page usage, search engine keyword usage, pay per click campaigns, etc., and the IT people may keep WebTrends in place as it provides excellent information about network and bandwidth usage, dead pages and bots and crawler usage. VisiStat actually complements any other analytics services, allowing all departments in a business to get exactly the information needed for their specific uses.
Q. VisiStat just released VisiStat 4.0. What are the new capabilities associated with the release of this version?
A. Well first, VisiStat 4.0 unveils unique features offered nowhere else, such as WorldMaps, which is a kind of a GPS for Website monitoring. With WorldMaps, users can see the source and volume of visits to their Website from any country around the globe. Second, our users asked us to respond to the dramatic increase in online advertising and e-mail campaigns. So VisiStat 4.0 now offers LinkTracker, a new feature that displays the number of document downloads and other clickable actions available on every page of a Website.
We’ve also added some security features like Domain Filtering, which uses data authentication to prevent "spoofing," a simple yet insidious trick where hackers simply copy a site's HTML page code and post their own look-alike site. The remaining new features in VisiStat 4.0 are designed to improve the user experience. Friendly Page Naming lets you create and track easy-to-remember page names instead of clumsy URL page descriptors, and QuickNav, a handy little toggle window, lets you jump directly to the VisiStat report you need, when you need it.
Q. Finally, can you offer some insight into where you see the Web Analytics market is headed?<
There are several theories about prospecting or cold calling for customers. One of them is learning the perfect script as a magic cure all. I find that a good script or properly preparing for your sales call is a very wise technique that can dramatically increase the success of your sales calls. However, plenty of my clients confess that it is not the sales process that trips them up. The most difficult part is picking up that 100 pound phone!Another theory about cold calling is dead or obsolete. What is meant by that is there are ways to implement savvy marketing in order to get your prospects calling you instead of you calling them.Does anything sound better than that? Just think about that for a moment. Wouldn't your job be peach perfect, if all
your prospects called you? The truth is, you probably would not have your curr
Q. Are you at all concerned about competing in the Web analytics market with titans like Google and WebTrends?
A. Not at all. We let these big players do the hard work of demand creation -- educating people about why Web analytics is so important. Meanwhile, we focus on delivering a valuable service to small- and medium-sized businesses in a way they can use and understand. It’s pretty obvious that if the users don’t comprehend their reports, they miss the full business benefits. And remember, unlike these other companies, VisiStat has always been focused on one thing – providing rich data as fast as humanly possible, in an easy-to-digest format. From a feature point of view, we provide many unique capabilities, like our exclusive StatCasting™, AdCaM™ and PageAlarm™ technology. These are things that even Google doesn’t have yet.
Q. How does VisiStat stack up against enterprise solutions?
A. It’s really apples and oranges. Enterprise solutions address a much different business model, and are tailored toward larger companies with educated staff to interpret the information they provide. VisiStat takes a much different approach, both in the data we provide and the means in which we deliver. VisiStat is very much suited for the small to medium business, where often times our customers are single business owners, or only have small staff, thus they do not have the time to become educated to use an enterprise solution, nor can they reasonably afford one.
Some extremely robust enterprise Web analytic products on the market provide very granular information. These services are perfect for the fortune 1000-type companies. VisiStat’s mission is to service the rest of the market. There were 18 million new domains registered in 2005 and the small business opportunity on the Internet grows every day. We seek to service those customers, which isn’t to say we can’t provide analytics for larger companies – we actually work with many large companies and they love the information VisiStat provides. But our focus is strongly on the small business community.
I guess the best way to sum it up is that Web analytics is not a "one-size-fits all" service, therefore, we provide VisiStat Web Analytics side by side with other tracking services. For instance, a marketing group may use VisiStat to monitor visitor traffic, page usage, search engine keyword usage, pay per click campaigns, etc., and the IT people may keep WebTrends in place as it provides excellent information about network and bandwidth usage, dead pages and bots and crawler usage. VisiStat actually complements any other analytics services, allowing all departments in a business to get exactly the information needed for their specific uses.
Q. VisiStat just released VisiStat 4.0. What are the new capabilities associated with the release of this version?
A. Well first, VisiStat 4.0 unveils unique features offered nowhere else, such as WorldMaps, which is a kind of a GPS for Website monitoring. With WorldMaps, users can see the source and volume of visits to their Website from any country around the globe. Second, our users asked us to respond to the dramatic increase in online advertising and e-mail campaigns. So VisiStat 4.0 now offers LinkTracker, a new feature that displays the number of document downloads and other clickable actions available on every page of a Website.
We’ve also added some security features like Domain Filtering, which uses data authentication to prevent "spoofing," a simple yet insidious trick where hackers simply copy a site's HTML page code and post their own look-alike site. The remaining new features in VisiStat 4.0 are designed to improve the user experience. Friendly Page Naming lets you create and track easy-to-remember page names instead of clumsy URL page descriptors, and QuickNav, a handy little toggle window, lets you jump directly to the VisiStat report you need, when you need it.
Q. Finally, can you offer some insight into where you see the Web Analytics market is headed?
What benefits will you get from flyers?Flyers are much different from postcards in that they convey product sales to the consumer. Safeway, Costco, Albertsons and other grocery chains are excellent at putting out flyers. Many consumers will look at the specials and head out to purchase them either when they need them or simply to stock up. Do flyers work in this respect? Yes, or they would not be doing them. If you are not in a high demand product line such as groceries, then a multiple page flyer may not be what you want to send to your local area. You may want to stick to postcards or one-pagers that have more impact.You can also be part of a flyer program that is offered by coupon book companies, and that way you are grouped together and your readership will likely be higher than if you try to go it alone. There are many really good coupon
Q. How does VisiStat stack up against enterprise solutions?
A. It’s really apples and oranges. Enterprise solutions address a much different business model, and are tailored toward larger companies with educated staff to interpret the information they provide. VisiStat takes a much different approach, both in the data we provide and the means in which we deliver. VisiStat is very much suited for the small to medium business, where often times our customers are single business owners, or only have small staff, thus they do not have the time to become educated to use an enterprise solution, nor can they reasonably afford one.
Some extremely robust enterprise Web analytic products on the market provide very granular information. These services are perfect for the fortune 1000-type companies. VisiStat’s mission is to service the rest of the market. There were 18 million new domains registered in 2005 and the small business opportunity on the Internet grows every day. We seek to service those customers, which isn’t to say we can’t provide analytics for larger companies – we actually work with many large companies and they love the information VisiStat provides. But our focus is strongly on the small business community.
I guess the best way to sum it up is that Web analytics is not a "one-size-fits all" service, therefore, we provide VisiStat Web Analytics side by side with other tracking services. For instance, a marketing group may use VisiStat to monitor visitor traffic, page usage, search engine keyword usage, pay per click campaigns, etc., and the IT people may keep WebTrends in place as it provides excellent information about network and bandwidth usage, dead pages and bots and crawler usage. VisiStat actually complements any other analytics services, allowing all departments in a business to get exactly the information needed for their specific uses.
Q. VisiStat just released VisiStat 4.0. What are the new capabilities associated with the release of this version?
A. Well first, VisiStat 4.0 unveils unique features offered nowhere else, such as WorldMaps, which is a kind of a GPS for Website monitoring. With WorldMaps, users can see the source and volume of visits to their Website from any country around the globe. Second, our users asked us to respond to the dramatic increase in online advertising and e-mail campaigns. So VisiStat 4.0 now offers LinkTracker, a new feature that displays the number of document downloads and other clickable actions available on every page of a Website.
We’ve also added some security features like Domain Filtering, which uses data authentication to prevent "spoofing," a simple yet insidious trick where hackers simply copy a site's HTML page code and post their own look-alike site. The remaining new features in VisiStat 4.0 are designed to improve the user experience. Friendly Page Naming lets you create and track easy-to-remember page names instead of clumsy URL page descriptors, and QuickNav, a handy little toggle window, lets you jump directly to the VisiStat report you need, when you need it.
Q. Finally, can you offer some insight into where you see the Web Analytics market is headed?
In addition to working with, and speaking to, a number of quick-serve and fast-casual
chains, I’m also fortunate enough to work with many full-service chains. While the
interactions and experiences are longer than in our environment, perhaps there are a few
things we can learn from our industry counterparts.Cornell’s School of Hospitality published a study back in April which provided 14 actions
servers could do that actually increase the tip percentage that guests left. The thrust of the
article suggests that managers should teach their servers how to make more money
because not only does it benefit the server in terms of more tips, but also the business—
with better service scores and increased guest frequency.While the vast majority of our employees are not tipped, the approach to enhancing
service (and lowering turnover) is the pa
I guess the best way to sum it up is that Web analytics is not a "one-size-fits all" service, therefore, we provide VisiStat Web Analytics side by side with other tracking services. For instance, a marketing group may use VisiStat to monitor visitor traffic, page usage, search engine keyword usage, pay per click campaigns, etc., and the IT people may keep WebTrends in place as it provides excellent information about network and bandwidth usage, dead pages and bots and crawler usage. VisiStat actually complements any other analytics services, allowing all departments in a business to get exactly the information needed for their specific uses.
Q. VisiStat just released VisiStat 4.0. What are the new capabilities associated with the release of this version?
A. Well first, VisiStat 4.0 unveils unique features offered nowhere else, such as WorldMaps, which is a kind of a GPS for Website monitoring. With WorldMaps, users can see the source and volume of visits to their Website from any country around the globe. Second, our users asked us to respond to the dramatic increase in online advertising and e-mail campaigns. So VisiStat 4.0 now offers LinkTracker, a new feature that displays the number of document downloads and other clickable actions available on every page of a Website.
We’ve also added some security features like Domain Filtering, which uses data authentication to prevent "spoofing," a simple yet insidious trick where hackers simply copy a site's HTML page code and post their own look-alike site. The remaining new features in VisiStat 4.0 are designed to improve the user experience. Friendly Page Naming lets you create and track easy-to-remember page names instead of clumsy URL page descriptors, and QuickNav, a handy little toggle window, lets you jump directly to the VisiStat report you need, when you need it.
Q. Finally, can you offer some insight into where you see the Web Analytics market is headed?
With the New Year upon us, you may be preparing to launch a new product or service online. To this end, here are the top 5 website marketing tools for 2007.Social Networking: In order to effectively sell your product or service, you need to network with internet marketers. Check all internet marketing forums; join, and avail yourself of their expertise. Establish friendships; ask questions, and keep an open mind. Continuous dialogue will enable you to better understand the ins and outs of internet marketing. Research as much as you can about the product or service you are offering to determine where it ranks in search engines.Joint Ventures: This can be most important to the success or failure of your future endeavor. While you may have expertise in one element of marketing, you may lack proficiency in other areas. To this end, seek out ot
We’ve also added some security features like Domain Filtering, which uses data authentication to prevent "spoofing," a simple yet insidious trick where hackers simply copy a site's HTML page code and post their own look-alike site. The remaining new features in VisiStat 4.0 are designed to improve the user experience. Friendly Page Naming lets you create and track easy-to-remember page names instead of clumsy URL page descriptors, and QuickNav, a handy little toggle window, lets you jump directly to the VisiStat report you need, when you need it.
Q. Finally, can you offer some insight into where you see the Web Analytics market is headed?
A. I think I can sum it up by saying that there is a vast untapped market that is just beginning to realize the benefits of Web analytics. The Internet continues to evolve – I remember when you had to convince someone why they needed a Website, then why they needed to be listed well in Search Engines, then why they needed their site to function and be a tool; and now this is all common place and businesses are realizing they need to know what’s happening on their indispensable Websites. They are starting to treat their online businesses just as they would a brick and mortar, where concepts such as return on investment has been an online mystery.
I think this market will continue to become commoditized. Businesses will require easy to use, real-time information, critical for their online success. The other trend I see is moving away from log-based, time-delayed reports and toward real-time, "as-it-happens" Web reporting. That’s a concept we refer to as “information at the speed of business™” and represents a shift in the Internet to Software as a Service (Web 2.0), where Websites perform and operate like their desktop software cousins, but with vast advantages for the consumer.
Q. Stephen, thanks for taking the time to speak with us today.
A. It’s been my pleasure.
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