Anyone in the analytics community knows Eric Peterson.  He’s an author, blogger, consultant and general advocate for the community as a whole.  Having recently struck out as a consultant, Eric is now vendor relationship free and spreading the gospel about web analytics process and, at this particular session of eMetrics, Web Analytics 2.0. 

There was a time when the complications of an analyst were centered around more finite challenges like cookie deletion.  But in a world of user generated content, an entire web experience inside one “page view”, automated agents executing JavaScript, content distribution through XML and RSS feeds, and non traditional browsers like iPhone and Blackberry, you can see how the analyst’s life has become a bit more complex.  Eric notes that the markers of web analytics 2.0 are quantitative & qualitative, it captures multiple browsing sessions, measures content distribution, complex event tracking, data from multiple sources, focused on data analysis & optimization, and visitors are persistent as individual indefinitely.  This isn’t simple page or logfile analysis, it’s a “website optimization ecosystem”.

Within that ecosystem, web analytics 2.0 is meant to address actions and measures in both the traditional quantitative sense (web analytics, testing and targeting) and the qualitative sense (voice of the customer, personalization).  For each stakeholder, designer or blogger, programmer or marketer, it’s a lens to focus on the question, “How is my site helping or hurting my customers and prospects?”

For some businesses, web analytics 2.0 can include a measure of engagement, currently a hot topic in the analytics community.  “There is no universal measure for engagement,” says Peterson, but he did use his own company’s site to demonstrate one way to tackle the measure (originally mentioned here).  He suggests this equation: