Monthly Archives: October 2009

Amazed by Coradiant's new Analytics in a Box

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I’ve been around the Analytics scene for a few years now, and one of the biggest hassles with tracking for really really big sites, or sites where security is a massive deal (online banking, etc), has been the need to tag all the pages (for javascript tracking), or to suffer with the limited info you get from web server logs.

The team from Coradiant, who include on their client list organisations like the FBI, have just pitched their new product, Analytics in a Box (AIB), which involves a box being installed on the inside of the Firewall (next to the web servers or load balancers). It then passively sniffs the network to see real time requests that clients make when loading web pages, submitting forms and the rest.

  • No pages need to be tagged with Javascript.
  • No access to the main web server logs is required.
  • You just drop it into the datacentre, turn it on, and configure the filters.

This solution is bloody incredible. It harnesses the power of Google’s Urchin product to manage the reporting and viewing of reports, but it extends the fields that Urchin can gather and report on, including anything in the headers. This gives them the power to do things like report on the number of visitors who go half way through a download of a white paper but have their download cancel, something that until now is impossible with either Javascript or Log File Analysis.

And so very much more.

One of the most impressive products I’ve seen in the Analytics – specifically the very high end enterprise stuff at US$35K a for the integrated server, Urchin, MySQL licence and the agents that control the whole process – since Woopra.

If you’re looking for an analytics solution with no javascript and more information than you can get out of log files, this could be the solution you’ve been looking. As an Urchin reseller, we’re one of the few ways to get this product around the world: contact me at Internetrix for more info.

Market Planning & Industry Categories – ANZSIC gets updated

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I’ve spent a lot of time over the last few months doing marketing planning for Hiive Systems. Unfortunately, our product is targeted at the professional services sector – think consultants, creatives, advisors, and that sort of thing.

I’ve been really conscious in this marketing process NOT to just keep on doing what we’ve always been doing, so thinking about existing clients and then defining our target market based around them just isn’t good enough. I’ve been thinking through industries based on my experience and memory – almost brain-storming – but it is a pretty crap way to do things, and certainly isn’t an extensive data set.

One of the best ways to work would be to start with a big long list of industries, and then tick those sectors that look appealing for closer examination. Unfortunately, Google has completely failed me – asking for a “list of professional service industries” came up with a bunch of very poor listing websites.

Going to more official sources, the primary list I’m aware of, ANZIC, has always seemed to me to be pretty poor. There’s a special category for fur trappers, but anyone who does anything related to marketing – from consulting through to web development through and beyond to display advertising – is bundled into the same generic blob.

Today, however, I realised that the ANZSIC list was updated in 2006, to reflect the way that industries have changed and evolved since the list was last compiled in 1993. Now with a lot more detail in the service sector – the one that keeps growing in an advanced economy like Australia’s – this list is actually useful.

If you’re interested in seeing it for yourself, the ABS have a copy (publication number 1292.0) at their website. Hopefully if you’re trying to write a marketing plan, this will help you out too…