So I’ve taken a hiatus from the blog to focus on work at Cobalt (which is pretty kick-ass) and as anyone who writes a blog knows, it can be a pain to write regularly.  A ton of stuff has been going on since my last post and I will write about it all soon, but for now I need to do some site housekeeping and transfer everything over to Wordpress to make things easier.  I could pretend like I have time to do a redesign but I don’t.  Dreamweaver is not really working right now, so I may have to find someone to help me do this without getting the Wordpress blank screen of death.

Just know that I’m alive and well and I will start posting again if for no other reason than to keep people from teasing me about not updating the blog. Oh and here are some awesome upcoming events in the Seattle area:

• SAS Social Media Analytics reception! I’ve been helping SAS get this event set up and it should be a really interesting discussion on SAS’s new tool. @kdpaine and @minethatdata will be there, so if someone comes out of it with the secret to measuring social media ROI, let me know. RSVP here.
• Web Analytics Wednesday sponsored by Unica: free food, free drinks, good times as usual.  RSVP here.

It’s that time.  Some of these events aren’t until October, but that’s ok.

1. InfoCamp on Oct. 10/11 2009! It’s in its 3rd year, and this year I fully intend to go. From what Rachel Elkington tells me, it might sell out this year, so you need to get tickets soon.  Find out more about this “unconference” on UX/IA/information here.
   

   InfoCamp design by Aaron Louie and Josh Walker

2. Baron Brewing is awesome. Not only are they making beers for the Pillager’s Pub (pirate-themed) in Greenwood, they also have this tiny taproom in South Park only open on Fridays from 4:30-8:30 that I must go back to pronto.
3. The band formerly known as Ladies and Gentleman but now known as The Head and the Heart, is having an art/music show on Sept. 27th at the Jewelbox Theatre.
4. Everyone raves about Fremont Oktoberfest, but I think I’ll skip that in favor of the less crowded Enumclaw Oktoberfest this year on Oct. 9th and 10th.
5. Web Analytics Wednesday is back on Oct. 7th at Cobalt. 3rd time’s the charm for me and hopefully ZAAZ will not have a conflicting party.
6. There is an excellent SEO and GA post on Yoast (unintentional rhyme), on how to set up a profile in Google Analytics just to track keyword positions–not just pages. At first it didn’t work for me, and then it did and I don’t know why. But still, its good to know versus the basic page info you get on Google Webmaster Tools.
7. Most importantly of all…today is International Talk Like a Pirate Day.  To celebrate, here is a pick-up line:

“That’s the finest pirate booty I’ve ever laid eyes on.“

Otherwise, UW beat USC and Cal beat Minnesota!  I spent all day trying to re-educate myself on SEO and figuring out how to insert an Excel scorecard into the body of an email and not have it look janky. It took way too long to get a workable solution for that.

Yay for alliterative titles. As I watch the new season of the Real Housewives of Atlanta, I also have to think about a web analytics reporting challenge.

Imagine you have a large, complex website with data pulls for monthly scorecards/dashboards, but the stakeholders viewing the scorecard have diverse, possibly mutually exclusive interests. For instance, one stakeholder might want to look at visitors to one section of the site, and another only wants to see the number of downloads for a different section. And you have to create one scorecard (for some reason I was just reminded of LOTR “one ring to rule them all”) to make everyone moderately happy.

Do I argue for creating more specialized scorecards or try to make a one-size-fits-all report? If I do choose the 2^nd option, do I try to include basic traffic reports along with a few more specialized metrics? I could also make the executive decision that a metric like average time on site is a metric that will not lead to actionable insights, and replace it with one of the stakeholder’s ideal metrics. Probably no one will be 100% happy but we’ll see how it goes. I’m open to suggestions.

Here’s the latest cool data visualization found on information aesthetics that shows a tool leveraging media aggregation and overlaying it on a map of New Orleans. Pretty cool, but kind of confusing. I’m also looking for data visualization tools (free and online accessible preferably) to try out with my own data sources–any recommendations?

Citymurmur New Orleans

Seattle finally cooled down, which is nice because I have a gross bruise on my leg from soccer that no one should be able to see.  Also I’m excited for Web Analytics Wednesday this week!

It’s time to pimp out events that I am a fan of again.

1. Monthly IA Meet-up at a new location, Rendezvous! It’s the 2nd Tuesday of each month (in Seattle), and usually has lots of cool/interesting people in attendance like librarians, iSchool peeps, and UX/IA professionals.
2. Its Web Analytics Wednesday again! This time I hope to not have an epic fail again, and will stay the whole time. Hopefully I can put faces to handles for some followers on Twitter! Once again, POP is generously hosting.
3. And Houghton Market in Kirkland is having a beer sale for 20% off as they are going out of business. Sad times, but beneficial to beer lovers.

GA Rant

OK, I hope that Google Analytics was having some random, never-will-happen-ever-ever-again technical issues going on today, because I was really annoyed. First, I kept getting compiler errors for the graphs that are automatically generated. Then, GA had all these horrible error messages that were not informative and did not assist in user recovery. The first error message I got was: “There was an error fetching data for this view.”  So, you know, I didn’t know what to do other than refresh the page. Next, I got another error message on a different metric that read “An Error Has Been Detected. Please try again. Thank you for your patience.”

Besides the fact that they used incorrect capitalization on the 2nd error message, it clearly violates one of Jakob Nielsen’s 10 heuristics for interface design:

Help users recognize, diagnose, and recover from errors. Error messages should be expressed in plain language (no codes), precisely indicate the problem, and constructively suggest a solution.

I generally really like the UI and UX of the Google Analytics tool, I think its easily manipulable and employs clear, simple design. However, the errors were frustrating, and I didn’t know how to fix any of them. I still don’t know what went wrong! #UXFail.

Also tomorrow is ZAAZ kickball and I’m on Team Tom Selleck. I hope to represent well.

Man. The past couple of days have felt like those days where you keep JUST missing the bus (which I did both mornings). Though I did get to go to the Good Fries Place on Monday, which made me feel better.

WebTrends Update

I was kindly informed that WebTrends has a new beta version that should have a much improved user experience and features.  While I don’t have access to the beta to test it out, based on the mock-ups and callouts it does seem pretty cool. Or at least like there’s more Design behind it. Some things, like added breadcrumb navigation, are small changes but immensely helpful I think. It also sounds useful to be able to compare across profiles by metric, and see the percent changes for metrics when comparing. Basically it just looks cool, and I think the beta goes public in August? I want to try it out for sure.

WebTrends Report Screenshot

YWA

I really need to stop following Yahoo Web Analytics on Twitter, because they keep posting about all their cool features, and like the WebTrends beta, its available to a limited audience.

“Yahoo! Web Analytics is currently offered for free to all Yahoo! Small Business Merchant Standard, Merchant Professional and Store merchants, and all Advertisers that are supported by a Yahoo! Account Manager.”

Lame.com. They claim to have an advantage by using raw data and delivering in real-time. I was interested in seeing how including Twitter in their search results would play out, but I guess I’ll just have to become a Yahoo! Small Business Merchant or wait.

Epic Fails

I fully intended to go to the entire Web Analytics Wednesday event yesterday and then I was sucked into staying late at ZAAZ. I didn’t realize the structure of the event so I thought it was just mingling most of the time, but I walked into a discussion of the talk on integrating social media into web analytics. Then I had to leave early to see Harry Potter and I didn’t even get to meet anyone. What I did hear of the discussion was interesting, with people unsure about the influence and impact of social media and Twitter especially, where one person can impact exponentially more people through followers and retweets. I’m sad I missed any talk of good tools to use though.

So then I went to watch Dumbledore die, and I sat down in the front row of the theatre and realized “Oh no. This is a Harry Potter movie so its going to be at least 3 hours.” I barely stayed awake but it was enjoyable overall.

Tomorrow I’m going to the Oregon coast! Yay! Time for Tillamook ice cream, the beach, and good beer.

Information overload, but I think I’ve survived web analytics boot camp. Except now its all I can think about all the time. I’m excited to go to Web Analytics Wednesday at POP on July 15th so I can start meeting more web analytics nerds and talk with them about social media and other stuff. Now I need to play more in Web Trends and Omniture and test out the reports and things to have a sense of the UI and capabilities.  Also I need to practice making things look pretty in Excel. I used to think that was an oxymoron. Mainly I’m looking forward to playing around with data.

FC ZAAZ 99 represent

I played my first outdoor soccer game since Ireland with FC ZAAZ 99 (why 99 I don’t know) last night. We lost, but it was still a lot of fun. I hate playing against teams with people that are 20 years older than me and also unskilled, because they think they are really good and get mad if you touch them at all. I also hate playing on sand. It is the worst to feel like you can’t run as fast and its like there’s a sandstorm in my eyes. Still, I’m looking forward to the next game.

Since I won’t start at Microsoft for a couple weeks, I’ll be spending my free time reading nerdy books, hiking, tanning, and visiting interesting places.

Also Rachel’s wedding is officially coming in June of 2010!! Congrats!

I thought today would be as good as any to promote worthy people/events/music from the blog.

1. Web Analytics Wednesday! Its a networking/social thing, that will (obviously) include beer and food. I’ve never been to one, but I’m planning on attending this.  My favorite part is the “drink responsibly” warning at the bottom. RSVP here.
2. Brazen Lungs.  A band based out of Dublin, the name comes from an Edgar Allen Poe poem (so you know they’re legit). Check them out here.
3. Guinness Record Zombie Walk.  The super cool and fun Fremont Outdoor Cinema is trying to organize the world’s largest zombie walk finished off with a viewing of “Shaun of the Dead“. Its happening tomorrow, July 3rd. Details here.
4. Free Online (or in person if you’re in Seattle) Flash Classes.  Generously hosted by CreativeTechs, and a very useful skill to have for prototyping or general web development. Sign up here.
5. Ladies and Gentlemen.  Another awesome band with an acoustic/folksy vibe, in Seattle (specifically Ballard-ish area), who I think is playing on July 27th. Listen to them here.

And finally my song of the day: Herringbone by Department of Eagles.