For all the web analytics nutcases out there, you should look into the eMetrics conference. They have several of these per year in various locations across the country. Just be aware that each conference is a bit different since they are tailored more to the audience they expect to attend. I’ve heard that the conference near Washington D.C. has a governmental bent as well as the attendees.
Let me give a shout out to a few people before I provide a little info on the conference. Rachel Scotto of Sony, great to see you again! Matt Langie of Omniture, great job as usual! Aseem Chandra of Omniture, great to meet you. Omniture’s future looks bright with people of your caliber on board. Jim Sterne of eMetrics, great event. Thanks.
So, on to what I picked up at the conference.
I’ve been to 3 Omniture Summit’s, but this was my first industry conference on web analytics. The main difference between this conference and the Summit is that the Omniture’s conference is a product/user community conference. eMetrics is and industry conference where several vendor products are discussed and used by the attendees. Discussions are focused more on general practice of web analytics rather than how to use specific products.
A couple of session highlights.
Expedia.com by Joe Megibow. Let me start with Joe is an incredible presenter. He knows his stuff and conveys it effectively and with a flair for humor. Joe presented a ton of information, but the main point I took away was how consistently leveraging analytics to fix and correct every problem however small it seems continues to build conversion and customer satisfaction. Keep at it. A later presentation by eVOC compared Voice of Customer between Expedia, Travelocity, Priceline, and Orbitz. While Travelocity, Priceline and Orbitz are suffering during this bad economy, Expedia is doing well.
SiteTuners.com – Tim Ash did a couple of great presentations on landing page conversion. He specifically mentioned how graphic designers are drawn to use images of peoples faces, but that actually can hurt conversion. The human face is a very powerful image. By using it, visitors have a tougher time engaging with the rest of the page and conversions can go down. This mainly applies to landing pages.
eMetrics was a great networking event. Each night in the lobby, we gathered, enjoyed complimentary chocolates and music. If you are into web analytics or care anything about website performance, I highly recommend the eMetrics conference.