Fellow KMM Blogger Marshall Sponder was kind enough to email me some follow up to my comment on his WebMetricsGuru blog and my Defining Attention on Websites & Blogs Bibliography and Response to Marshall Sponder response on this blog. He asks how NextStage uses "...analytics to break down:
'...Are you asking what is measured? I mention in Defining Attention on Websites & Blogs that we measure things like focused cognition, intentional awareness and other factors.'
focused cognition, intentional awareness, etc. Something similar to what Eric Peterson does with Visual Sciences... For example, if I wanted to figure out the intentional awareness of someone visiting my site and I did not have your software but I did have Google Analytics would you be able to share how I might do a "poor man's" intentional awareness chart?"
Ah, well, hmm...I received Marshall's email a few days back and have been pondering it since.
First, I don't know what Eric Peterson is doing with Visual Sciences (sorry, I'm not up on everything. Sometimes I feel like I'm not up on anything). Perhaps Eric and some others and I will have a chance to talk at the Emetrics Summit and I'll be able to better answer the question.
Second, I'm not a Google Analytics expert. I've seen the system and couldn't find anything which would allow one to calculate any of the factors NextStage monitors with its tools. This is not meant to be a disparagement of Google Analytics. It is designed to do one thing, NextStage's tools are designed to do another. I've repeatedly and freely admitted that NextStage's tools and technology aren't in the web analytics realm as I understand it.
I did spend a few hours on the problem, never-the-less. Nothing that I came up with would work. I'm sure this is my limitation and not Google Analytics. I couldn't come up with a methodology which would determine intentional awareness, focused cognition, etc., based on what Google Analytics provides because the Google toolset simply isn't designed to monitor the things the NextStage toolset is designed to monitor.
NextStage's clients with web challenges usually have a traditional web analytics package in place. We let them know that they can't count on us to provide numbers for things such as visitors per day, etc., number of pages viewed, etc., time-on-site, etc., because that's not what our tools are designed to measure.
Please contact NextStage for information regarding presentations and trainings on this and other topics.
I'll be speaking at the San Francisco April '07 Emetrics Summit on Quantifying and Optimizing the Human Side of Online Marketing on May 7, 2007. Come on by and say hello.
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