GAAC + WOAC Summit 2009

Written by Chris Breikss
on Thursday, October 29th, 2009

Two weeks ago, Google held its annual GAAC, WOAC and USAC Summit in Mountain View, California. Two representatives from 6S attended and got the scoop on all of the new features being rolled out for Google Analytics and Website Optimizer.

First a little bit of background. Back in 2007, 6S Marketing was the second company in Canada to be designated as Google Analytics Authorized Consultants (GAAC). Then in October 2008, 6S was appointed as official Website Optimizer Authorized Consultants (WOAC). Today, we are one of five Canadian companies who have the dual certification.

Day 1: WOAC

Day one was dedicated entirely to Website Optimizer. We not only had the opportunity to hear from fellow WOACs from all over the world, but also to hear directly from Google’s Website Optimizer team about what was in store for us in the coming weeks. The two biggest updates for Website Optimizer are the over-time charts and experiment management API.

In their own words:

With over time charts you can see the cumulative conversion rate of each combination over the life of an experiment. This can give you a better understanding of how your site is performing. The new charts are available for all Website Optimizer experiments, and you’ll find them on the reports page.

Over-Time Charts

Over-Time Charts

The experiment management API has great potential for making Website Optimizer tests easier to provision. Imagine being able to instantly start a new experiment through any content management system. No more having to copy and paste control scripts and conversion codes. Hallelujia!

There was also a lot of talk about usability on day one. Several presenters shared their favourite tools and services with the crowd (something I always enjoy about conferences), but the underlying message here was simple. Usable websites increase conversions. Website Optimizer goes hand in hand with usability, so keeping up to speed with the latest in usability tools is only natural. Some notables include CrazyEgg, ClickTale and UserTesting.com.

Day 2: GAAC

Day two started off with a keynote from Avinash Kaushik titled “A Crime Against Humanity.” Avinash really struck a chord with all of the GAACs in the room with his overarching commentary on the state of web analytics today and how we rely on a very centralized way of collecting data. JavaScript on our sites may tell us how many visitors and pageviews we’re getting, but it does not tell us how far reaching our message is or how engaged our readers are.

These days, content can be pushed, pulled, syndicated, scraped, RSS’d, emailed and shared in so many different ways that our poor analytics systems have no way of giving us meaningful metrics. Instead of measuring visits and pageviews, we should be looking at “smart metrics” like engagement, reach, velocity, demand, network strength, and activity. On blogs, we should be looking at things like the conversation rates per post, the number of words per comment, and the number of words per post.

After Avinash left the stage, Phil Mui (Senior Product Manager for Google Analytics) came up to announce the new features being rolled out over the next few weeks. These include:

Intelligence
Customizable Alerts
Multiple Custom Variables
Expanded Goals and Engagements
Table Filtering
Expanded Mobile Tracking
Unique Visitor Metrics

Read more about the Intelligence feature and watch the 6S blog for more in-depth reviews of each new feature being release by Google Analytics.

Another notable presentation was delivered by Meredith Papp on the state of mobile marketing. Meredith shared some impressive statistics that impressed upon us the ubiquity of mobile devices and the growing usage of mobile devices for what would have otherwise been reserved for desktop or laptop devices (browsing the web, downloading applications, streaming video and making purchases). I don’t think it’s hard to see that Google is making a major play in the mobile space, with its mobile advertising options through the AdWords platform, newly announced mobile tracking features in Google Analytics and of course its open-source mobile operating system, Android. Advertisers, are you ready for a mobile audience?

Day 3: GAAC

Day three continued on with more Google Analytics. The day started with a keynote from Hal Varian, Google’s Chief Economist. You may remember Hal from his video Introduction to the Google Ad Auction. Hal’s keynote talked about using tools like Google Insights and Google Trends to help forecast economic activity. He suggested using these tools to look for correlated trends in data that would affect your industry, and that past cycles of economic activity could help predict future activity.

The rest of the day was filled with presentations by fellow GAACs, showing us case studies and highlighting products that had been created using the APIs and various tools made available by the Google Analytics team. I attended a breakout session held by Phil Mui which was essentially a deep-dive on the new Google Analytics features. The attendees of that session were particularly interested in the new multiple custom variables features. I predict there will be some very interesting uses of this feature being published soon.

Final Thoughts

Looking back at the entire trip, I think that Google has done a fantastic job of communicating their latest developments and future roadmap for both Google Analytics and Website Optimizer. Getting GAACs and WOACs up to speed with these changes is a big priority for these product teams, since we are the ones using these tools on a daily basis. The new API developments will give developers even greater functionality for their applications and services, which will make it even easier for the rest of us to use these tools. In the end, everybody wins.