We are very proud to announce a partnership between the Web Analytics Association and Save the Children (STC). This project stems from two independent proposals developed at roughly the same time (early 2009), "Web Analytics Without Borders" by WAA volunteers, and "Nonprofit Web Capacity Roadmap and Production Process" by STC. The goal of the project: to reach 74 million children by 2012.

The WAA is interested in helping NGOs as a way to share our pool of knowledge and give back to society. Once this model has proven successful, the WAA have plans to help other NGOs. Involvement from the non-profit organization is crucial. Save the Children was selected as a first project because of the expressed interest, willingness to give access to their data and provide the necessary resources while being comfortable with the fact this constitute a first attempt at this collaboration model. Once proven, the scenario should be replicable with other organizations.

Through this partnership, WAA members will be able to gain experience transforming an organization into a data-driven culture. In non-profits like Save the Children, the benefits of adaptable, test-driven teams and analytics-led decision making are appealing. Despite the appeal, tight times demand focus on contributing to the mission, so resources go to the field in order to meet our goal of reaching 74 million children by 2012. At the same time, we cannot ignore capacity building and the benefits of a data-driven culture.

Save the Children's Web Team will provide access to Google Analytics, Webtrends, and optionally other platforms like Adwords. Save the Children will also share team goals, processes, scope, and objectives, allowing WAA members to become part of our team. Together, using the Web Analytics Maturity Model as a roadmap, we will evaluate our current situation, determine appropriate strategies for increasing capacity and results, and together build a mature analytics program that drives insights and action organization-wide.

Our vision is that every analyst participating in the Web Analytics Without Borders program becomes part of Save the Children's web team, helps develop a data-driven culture from scratch, increase and uses their experience to enable positive and sustainable change in thousands of childrens' lives.

This program is lead by Stéphane Hamel (WAA Director), Daniel Waisberg (Co-Chair of Marketing), and Kris Groulx (Marketing volunteer) on the WAA side. Adam Laughlin is coordinating our efforts on the Save The Children side. Come join us in this journey to improve the lives of millions of children around the world! The program will kickoff on January 2010. Email waa.membership [at] webanalyticsassociation [dot] org to join us or leave a comment on this post.

Roughly 8 hours until all submissions are due for the WA Championship 2009! We have four esteemed judges standing by to review: Judah Philips, Jennifer Veesenmeyer, Stéphane Hamel and "Wandering" Dave Rhee!

The WAA conducted its Annual Member Meeting on Thursday, October 29, 2009. As part of that meeting, a panel of board members representing key constituencies within the Web Analytics community shared their perspectives of where the industry is headed – and what it means to WAA and its members.

The panelists were:

• Matthew Langie, Omniture
• Dennis Mortensen, Yahoo!
• Peter Sanborn, Microsoft
• Alex Yoder, WebTrends

It was a candid, thoughtful, and provocative discussion that has generated a lot of comment and buzz. Some ideas expressed:

• Web analytics is an enabling technology that has allowed marketers, business analysts and ICT professionals to make more informed decisions related to both the business and marketing.
• This industry is at the core of change towards better understanding and improving customer satisfaction.
• ...more...

We encourage you to listen in to the discussion and share your thoughts and reactions with us.

I, like probably all of you, was caught totally by surprise by the news this morning that Adobe has bought Omniture.  My reactions ranged from "WOW!", to "Wow!", to "wow" and pretty soon the emails started arriving from friends in the web analytics industry around the world and my colleagues on the WAA Board nearly all expressing the same level of surprise and incredulity.  I think June Dershewitz (a fellow WAA Board member) has so far said it best: "This is the news of the year."

I've been thinking about this for a while now, and as the day closes, here are my thoughts about this news:

1. First and foremost, huge congratulations to Josh James and the entire team at Omniture.  They've been working hard at building the company and clearly been executing flawlessly for some time.  The valuation of the acquisition drives home the point that they've built significant value (I'm sure Adobe had the best of the many idle minds at Wall St. working on this), which is no small feat and is certainly an accomplishment to take pride in.
2. Seeing our industry in the front page of the Wall Street Journal business section, USA Today, Yahoo News, etc. is a huge validation of the importance, scope and role for web analytics.  It's also mainstream recognition that web analytics is moving up the food chain in the corporate world, and a shot across the bow that you'll need to take this function seriously if you want to remain a top performing organization.
3. I said at one of the eMetrics events that we are still really in the infancy stage of this industry, and I still believe this to be the case.  But events like these underscore both how wide open the future of web analytics is, and yet how it is still somewhat of a "cottage" industry.  We've seen a lot of consolidation in the past few years, yet this sector is still much smaller than even the CRM industry!  There is still so much room for innovation and growth.

I'll close by saying that we - the WAA - look forward to Omniture's continued involvement with the Association as our field expands, matures and gains the recognition it well deserves.

Alex Langshur
President, WAA Board of Directors

Dear WAA Members and Friends:

A few days ago we discovered an unusual and unexpected issue with the WAA site and it requires us to suspend the Web Analytics Championship until it's resolved.

When a user requests a new password, their email is passed through the URL and, therefore, it appears on content reports on web analytics (WA) tools. As soon as this issue was brought to our attention we closed access to the WA tools, determined the scope of the data access, and immediately started working on a solution to solve the issue. We treat member privacy very seriously, and because the email address could be linked to a visitor session we wanted to pro-actively inform the community of what happened. This message therefore, is for information, and no action is necessary on your part.

Unfortunately, will have to postpone the Championship for a few weeks until the issue is fully resolved.

We deeply regret any inconvenience caused to our members and participants in the Championship. We want you to know that we are taking all measures so that this never happens again.

Please contact the or call + 1 (800) 349-1010 with any questions.

Thank you.

Alex Langshur
President, WAA