WebTrends Engage '07: What Happened in Vegas

Was I there to bask in the legendary Las Vegas ambiance?  Or was I there to learn about WebTrends' new product offerings?  In all honesty, a little of both.

I've just returned home from the WebTrends Engage conference, held October 9th and 10th, in Las Vegas.  I'd never been to a vendor-sponsored show before.  It was a little odd to be surrounded by many (though not all) of the usual suspects in the field of web analytics - clients, vendors, consultants - but conspicuously absent were some of my favorite people who happen to work for (or are clients of) competing vendors.  I enjoy events like X Change and eMetrics precisely because of the lack of tool focus - vendor neutrality makes it easier for participants to transcend the whole discussion of tools and talk about what really matters to us and the businesses our work supports.

BUT, as I said I was there to experience Vegas and learn about WebTrends products.  Mission accomplished.

First things first: Vegas ambiance.  WebTrends threw a fabulous party on Tuesday night at the Palms hotel.  The club was totally over-the-top: retractable moon roof, smoke machine, cheesy cover band, guys from the conference dancing somewhat awkwardly while still wearing their name badges.  Dave Navarro showed up later in the evening.  Really. 

And then there was my hotel room.  Although I paid the normal room rate, hotel staff inexplicably (mistakenly?) upgraded me to a penthouse suite - 6 rooms, 4 couches, 3 TVs, panoramic view of the Strip, etc.  Ha!  I was hardly even there.  I was out at the conference, as I said, learning about WebTrends products.

As the name of the conference suggests, WebTrends is pushing the concept of engagement.  One of their new products, Score, makes it easier for marketers to create custom engagement metrics and then assign a score to every single visitor.  How cool is that?!  On Tuesday there was a panel discussion on engagement involving a great cast of thought leaders in our field, including Semphonic's own Gary Angel.

There's definitely some debate on whether or not we think engagement is real or fluff.  Regardless, tools like Score will make it possible for practitioners to see if engagement is a useful thing to concentrate on in real life, not just in theory.

Score was actually the second-most interesting/useful product I learned about at the conference.  The real reason I was there was to learn about Visitor Intelligence.  You can bet I took notes.  I will share some thoughts on Visitor Intelligence in another post.  In the meantime, check out this thorough review written by my fellow conference attendee, Jacques Warren.

Comments

[Eric T. Peterson]

Penthouse suite?! Now we can all see how you roll, June. You're the next "Jason and Shane" late-night party train, coming to town ... ;-)

E.

[tracy r]

Um, June, I think something is missing from this post. ;)

[June]

Tracy, I'll neither confirm nor deny the existence of disco dancefloor video footage. :)

[benry]

Wow. Sounds like a pretty interesting event and some exciting changes at WebTrends. Have they talked at all about their "Move to ML2” program that they started which offers up to a 100% license credit to switch from HBX Analytics to the newly announced WebTrends Marketing Lab 2?

[June]

Hi Benry. The "Move to ML2" program was not mentioned in the sessions I attended. On the subject of platform-switching, though, it should be noted that WebTrends Visitor Intelligence and Score both require the use of WebTrends SDC (ie javascript tagging). That means if you're using the logfile version of WebTrends you'll have to switch to tags before you can use the new add-on products.

[Mark Saxby]

Hi June,

How are things?

Glad you enjoyed Vegas - How do you rate WebTrends' latest products overall - VI and Score look pretty good now the market's caught up with what we were doing all those years ago! :)

Mark

[June Dershewitz]

Mark, long time no see! I was hoping I'd run into you at the WebTrends conference. Your comment reminds me that I ought to compose a serious blog post about Visitor Intelligence. :)

An OLAP interface to web activity data? Imagine. [sarcasm] After years of being frustrated by the fact that I can't just drop a new dimension into any old report, literally *years* of griping about not being able to create a drill-down or filter or custom measure worth beans, I'm happy to see products like Visitor Intelligence and Score enter the market. I'd like to think that we're finally ready to move beyond summary and start benefiting from visitor-level detail.