X Change Web Analytics Conference and the Problems of Really Big Companies
The recent meltdown of some of the largest and most storied companies of the modern world and the resultant government bail-out’s has created a whole new category of enterprise – the none too flattering description of “too big to fail.” But without getting into the treacherous and irrational waters of politics, it’s true enough that great size carries with it both the benefits and the costs of enormous scale. Many of the companies attending X Change have the resources, vast user-base, and technical infrastructure to achieve projects of enormous scope and interest. Yet they must always contend with the frictions and complexities created by their multinational character, massive installed base, and complex internal structure.
Given that X Change is heavily focused on enterprise analytics, it’s no surprise that some of the Huddles are focused on the special concerns of the very large enterprise or reflect the large enterprise concern with consistency and standardization.
Take, for example, the Huddles being led by HP's Matthew Wright. First, he’ll be tackling a Huddle on universal tagging. Matthew developed a universal tagging strategy at HP in an effort to eliminate the wild proliferation of tags on many enterprise pages. If you have multiple analytics tags, ad-serving tags, SEO tags, video tags, testing tags, and so on, you already know what a pain point this is becoming for many enterprises. This discussion is a great opportunity to kick around some real-world solutions and find ways to get yourself out of tag-proliferation hell.
Matthew will also be leading a Huddle on testing. But he’s not aiming for a reprise of the “which color of button worked best” type of discussion. Instead, his group will cover the “dirty little secret of A/B and multivariate testing” - how much work there is before and after the actual test. The focus will be on what it takes in a large corporation to test effectively: getting key stakeholders on board, determining metrics for success, and setting clear expectations can be more work than the actual design and execution.
Gil Roeder, of Barclays Global Investing, has been leading a different sort of effort – trying to bootstrap a large analytics capability onto an international organization without a mature online measurement culture. He’ll be leading a Huddle focused on selling analytics to the organization, communicating the challenges and potential to really senior management, navigating the organization to build a measurement capability, and figuring out how to leap forward in expertise without taking on undue risk. That leap-frog issue is, I think, a big one.
In today’s world, most companies have been forced to leave the middle ground of doing semi-serious web analytics and either fold or ante-up. I see many organizations having to finally decide whether or not to abandon the field (and the costs) of serious analytics and just accept free and easy reporting or to make a real commitment to measurement as a strategic advantage. If you’re attending X Change, chances are you’re in the second category (and good for you). But leap-frogging in capability is a notoriously risky endeavor for large companies and Gil’s Huddle will give you chance to discuss the best strategies for moving forward rapidly without leaping off any cliffs.
Michael Scherotter has the enviable job of being Media Experience Evangelist at Microsoft. You have to be a pretty big company to have evangelists, and Michael’s concerns reflect both Microsoft’s technical prowess and size. First, he’ll lead a Huddle discussing the events and actions we should be measuring to understand user engagement on RIA applications. The number and importance of rich media applications is climbing steadily – to the point that Web 2.0 constructs are more the rule than the exception. But strong measurement paradigms for rich media remain elusive and well worth discussing. His second topic is an effort to get a discussion going around the standardization of offline and out-of-browser experiences. Frameworks like Gears, Air and Microsoft’s own Silverlight (as well as mobile applications) have opened up a whole new realm (and set of corporate nightmares) when it comes to measurement. This is a chance to get ahead of the curve and get a sense of where technology leaders are heading in this area.
And finally, I can’t help but include in this group the Huddles led by our returning keynoters from last year Bill Gassman (Gartner) and John Lovett (Forrester). John and Bill were great last year and I’m so glad they are returning this year and leading Huddles. The Huddle I’m most excited about is the one they are sharing – focused on the web site optimization ecosystem. Given their jobs, they have a better sense than probably anyone else in the world of how different enterprises are trying to deploy, integrate and benefit from all the disparate tools involved in online measurement. From voice of customer to content management and marketing optimization to classic web analytics, they see it all and are guiding this discussion on how to make that ecosystem benefit your organization.
John will be following that up with a Huddle dear to any large enterprise heart – the question of standards. With scale the importance of standards becomes paramount. You simply can’t manage a large enterprise without careful attention to standardization. The immaturity and confusion of web analytics have made that an even bigger challenge than it is everywhere else. In this Huddle, you can hear what people think about IAB and WAA standardization efforts, where vendors are heading, and help each other figure out where is the best place to draw your own lines in the sand.
Bill Gassman will lead a discussion around people and process in web analytics – and what to do about all the organizational issues that seem to cause most of our problems. If you want to become a “best-in-breed” user of measurement, careful attention to business process is essential. This is a chance to hear about how some organizations have climbed the web measurement maturity ladder and to discuss your own challenges and success stories.
If you share these problems of international scope, great internal complexity, and massive usage, these discussions are for you. It’s ironic, perhaps, that a conference dedicated to the idea of staying small and intimate in scale is the venue for so much discussion driven by the problems of scale. But X Change is a rare opportunity to talk to peer-to-peer with others who share the same type of problem; people who aren’t there to sell you anything but simply to share their own expertise, experiences and thoughts. Around web measurement and online in general, size has its share of both advantages and disadvantages, but for conversation, smaller is definitely better!
[If you're still on the fence about attending X Change or need some ammunition to help get budget, you may also want to check out Phil Kemelor's recent blog]
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