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Read this now…or miss the deadline


We’ll get to the deadline at the end of the post.
In the meantime, let me explain why Manoj was kind enough to invite me to write a bit about the latest edition of Semphonic’s Implementation Toolkit for SiteCatalyst. Specifically, Manoj wanted to know how the toolkit goes beyond documentation provided by Omniture. It is a good question.
To begin with, I think there is a philosophical difference between our take on this subject and that of Omniture because we are a vendor neutral web analytics consultancy. As such, we look at implementation issues from a practitioner’s point of view. Some of you may be familiar with some of our white papers about Omniture, as well as my work with CMSWatch to know that this independence strongly influences how we view web analytics practice. So we tend to “call ‘em , like we see ‘em. ” For instance, that you’ll need to use Omniture’s cross tabulation functions to achieve the type of management reporting you were used to having through HBX Active Segments; or we carefully describe the syntax for each function you’ll need for capturing Flash, Ajax and DHTML and provide instruction on how to set up variables.


We concentrate on other practitioner concerns, such as walking through the items you’ll need to have Omniture enable. We find that folks sometime forget about this until the last minute… for instance enabling visits and visitor metrics for Commerce variables, enabling pathing on prop variables other than Pages, specifying the traffic and conversion variables you would like to see sub-related or co-related.

Quality assurance is a big focus of ours in the Implementation Toolkit…again this is something we’ve seen from our time “in the trenches” that people tend to rush through; hence, we’ve made our 20 point Quality Assurance check list available…the same one we use ourselves .


The other thing we concentrated on in writing the Toolkit is to make the content as easy to understand as possible…even for non-implementers. In fact, we have gotten some great feedback from web analytics project managers who have said that the Toolkit has given them the background they need to manage their technical resources when doing an implementation.

So, that’s basically how I see the Toolkit as being different than Omniture documentation. Of course, you might go the route Stephane Hamel suggested in his review of the Toolkit, and use the Toolkit in tandem with Omniture’s Fusion Playbook.

Either way, take a look for yourself at: http://www.semphonic.com/analytics/impguides.asp

I should mention that we’re running a contest right now to give away a copy of the Implementation Toolkit. Here’s the deal:

You email us your most challenging Omniture implementation or HBX Migration question. We’ll select the toughest question and answer it at X Change <http://www.semphonic.com/conf/index.asp> , and send you a copy of the Toolkit as a reward for having the hardest, most difficult question. You don’t need to attend X Change to win, but it would be nice, right?

And for those of you who ask a question that isn’t the toughest…we’ll answer them too, and send you our response directly.
Don’t forget to provide your name and organization name with your email. Wewon’t use this information for any reason other than to contact you if you won and to answer the question you submit. Remember we can only answer one question per person, so make it a good one!
Send your entries to: analytics@semphonic.com

All entries are due by 11pm PST, Wednesday August 6.
And, if you’d like to purchase the Toolkit straightaway and receive a 10% discount, just go to http://www.semphonic.com/analytics/impguides.asp and use Manoj’s promo code: manoj1008
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