K’necht – Spotlight on an expert

This new series will take a deeper look at the lives of our experts. This interview has been edited to make it more concise and clear.

We mean it when we say Contributor Alan K’necht has been a web analytics expert for a very long time. He worked on search and analysis before many of the tech giants we know today existed. He studied business and economics at the University of Waterloo, Canada. He developed an interest in computer programming and became proficient at it. It led him to titles and roles like desktop publisher manager and webmaster, which are now extinct.

Alan was seated with us and we asked him questions about his career.

Q : What’s the latest on you and your dotcom bubble, I hear?

A : I was a part of a dotcom company that went bankrupt like so many others. Stock options were once very attractive. Stocks were soaring as the company was being bought out. We were all very excited.

Our weblogs were inspected by the buyers to determine how much traffic they received. I had to inform the auditor that the numbers would not match. They thought I was inflating numbers, but I explained that I had written a software program to remove bots and other traffic for more accurate results.

Q. What is the exact opposite of inflation?

It was funny at the time. So I began speaking at events on web development analytics and other such topics. In March 2000, I gave a keynote speech at a conference for web developers in Sydney, Australia. Everyone was checking their stock prices between sessions.

In North America, it’s Friday evening, late afternoon. One of the things that I talked about was why we should measure our success. We can’t simply report page views. We need to know what conversions are and ensure we’re driving high-quality traffic. It was my old saying, “If we do not start doing this quickly, the bubble that we are all in will burst.”

As soon as I left the stage, I went straight to my computer to check on my stocks. Back then dial-up was required. I then saw that the NASDAQ dropped by 25% on Friday. As I gave the talk, I predicted the bubble even though I did not know that it had happened.

Q. How did Universal Analytics impact the industry?

A :When Google Analytics was made free, it slashed the legs out of many analytics products that were low- or middle-priced. Some of these products were amazing. Google aimed at a particular audience, namely marketing departments and non-technical people. They didn’t really care about the meaning of the numbers, they only wanted to be able to report them. The products used to be sold for $100 and $200. Log analyzers were their name. In a few years, they took over.

They also released a product in which I was regarded as one of the best trainers in North America. So much so, that I was hired to do some custom-made work for the Navy. As a Canadian, I was required to enter a US military facility. My permission was granted by an act of Congress.

It was during NAFTA, and NAFTA permits were never clear about the work that could be done. You had to present the permit at the border. The Navy offered me a job, I accepted, but didn’t have all the paperwork and they couldn’t send it to me because everything was so rushed. Security reasons prevented them from sending me any information about the system. They said they would take care of the problem.

When I went through customs to enter the U.S. I had a paper with a phone number of an admiral on it. It was my responsibility to hand it over to customs, and tell them to call the admiral in case I had any problems. I never did.

I go in to do the work and they tell me, “You cannot touch a computer, you must sit behind our programmer, and tell him what he should type.”

A: They had to go through a lot for you to look over their shoulder.

A : Yes they did.

Q. Has there ever been anything constant about web analytics from the beginning?

What it all comes down to is how many eyesballs you can get on your site. Do they have quality eyes? What is the definition of quality eyeballs for us?

Q. How did you solve that problem?

Years ago, I was a data warehouse employee for a startup technology company. It was probably employee number 12-13. Then, I was working as a webmaster. The Web was in its early stages. It was dial-up only. I created their website. I was called to the president’s room and he brought out a press release from our main competitor that said they were getting 200,000 hits. We were only getting 5,000-10,000 hits.

He says I want a plan of action by the end the week. How are we going increase the number? He refused to give me the chance to explain what “hit” was. In that number, I didn’t understand what they meant. Now they’re telling that I need to invent the number.

He asks, “What’s your plan?” I reply, “Here is the report for yesterday, and the hits are up by 20%.” He becomes suspicious. ‘How did you do it?’

I asked, “Have you noticed any changes to our website?” He said “Yeah I like the two new graphics that you added to the webpage.” I told him they were all hits. He says, “Okay, then explain to me what is a hit.”

I told him that whoever wrote the press release did not mention how many visitors their website received. The biggest number that they could find in their analytics tool was probably what they used. This is what I explain to people to this day. You can say that our YouTube videos were viewed this many times. But how many people actually watched it? How many people clicked the View button on YouTube?

What’s the trend? Does it increase? Is the rate increasing? You need context. This is my approach to everything I do in the world analytics.

The original post Alan K’necht: Spotlight of the expert was first published on MarTech.