Clicktrack's John Marshall

ClickTracks' CEO John Marshall took time out of his busy day for this interview via Instant Messenger.

Posted May 28th, 2005

Eric Gockel

ok, let's hit the ground running: Are you concerned about the increase of users deleting their cookies on a regular basis (or software doing it for them) -- doesn't that impact the effectiveness of your product?

John Marshall

The question should be divided into two, relating to first party and third party cookies.

Third party cookies suffer from the problem you describe, first party do not -- so our logfile based products are not affected. They are implicitly first party. Also our high end product JDC is effectively first party.

For example Intuit is switching to our technology for that reason. [With] our hosted products the user has a choice - either first or third.

So I am worried for the small-time vendors that cannot switch off third party technology, but not us.

EG
You've stated in the past that you're specifically not trying to be a HitBox with all its charts, reports and "path" data. Why is ClickTracks better than their product or would you recommend it (HBX) for a certain type of user?

JM
Hitbox is great for executive dashboards. It's clearly designed to impress the CEO and CIO. Our product is designed for the analyst - the person that actually has to crunch the numbers.

EG
And the interface designer and marketing crew.

JM
Right. Basically our product is used by people that need to use data to drive decisions. For example, a web designer uses our stuff if they have some basic understanding of the numbers in a small company. That might also be the marketing guy of course,
and in a bigger company it's a function of a department

EG
You mention Intuit uses your product, does it satisfy the CEO and CIO (and CFO) -- or do they even access it?

JM
They don't access it. Intuit delegates that down to each individual business unit. That's a philosophical difference. The traditional analytics products are assuming a top-down command-and-control structure:

"The dashboard tells me X, so tell the troops to do Y".

Our product assumes a bottom up structure:

"Hey, boss, I discovered this page doesn't work, so I tweaked it with red instead of blue, and I improved conversions from 2.23 to 2.37%"

"Great job, junior. Have a bonus"

The top down companies are too sclerotic to actually do anything with the data anyway, so we bypass them and appeal to the nimble companies who can integrate analysis into the process of understanding customers, at a tactical level.

EG
The other analytic software packages have copied your "overlay" approach. Any changes coming up on your end -- or does ClickTrack's still have an advantage over theirs?

JM
We have currently several huge advantages:

It actually works. We've tried Webtrends and Urchin on demand. We couldn't make it work.

In Urchin it's also worth noting it's buried inside the product. It should be right up front, but they know it doesn't work I expect. This is frustrating for me, because it devalues the feature across the industry. It's another example of "looks great in the demo, fails in real use".

Another advantage is that with ours you can view it with segmentation applied, and of course the segmentation is ad hoc. The report is useless without comparison of different segments, and I'm not sure *anyone* does this except us. Again, very frustrating. People are buying product that is fatally flawed if you can't do this.

Finally, we can cope with Javascript pages and other complexities that others can't.

EG
Have you seen Google's new free conversion tracking component for their Adwords? For someone who is purely interested in conversions and not behavior, is this good enough for them?

JM
Yes, it's pretty good if you are willing to accept the following limitations:
1. No organic search data, and no ability to understand if paid vs organic on the same keyword is better
2. Third party cookie (see above)
3. You're OK exposing this data about your business to Google
4. You're willing to have another separate measurement system for your other campaigns

EG
Aren't I exposing my business data to your hosted solution?

JM
Yes, and that's important for customers to understand but we can't make you pay more for each paid click because of good conversion. Google can.

I strongly believe that your analytics should be independent it's like hiring an auditor. Without independence, it's a charade.

EG
For site developers, do you have any tips on SEO that might prove helpful beyond the basic ones we already know about? Any practices that we should stop doing?

JM
Hmmm....very interesting. Pay attention to not just the keywords, but the keywords for entry pages.

For example, look at your top entry pages, and in ClickTracks label those visitor segments. Then examine those keywords on those entry pages. Designers don't pay enough attention to those pages. Remember: that page is the users first experience of your site/product/service. NOT the home page!

EG
Can you tell us a little about your latest baby, Optimizer?

JM
We previously had 2 products. Analyzer at $495 and Pro at $2,995. Analyzer has the advantage of very simple installation, simple configuration etc. It's perfect for small business, time-starved consultants etc.

Pro of course has more features, but perhaps most importantly it takes a few hours to get everything setup and configured.

People want the more advanced features of Pro, but they don't want to install the server code (Pro is client-server architecture, and it's setting up the server that is the issue) so we took some of the more advanced features of Pro, like the what's changed report and the robot report and put them into a mid-range product that is as easy to setup as Analyzer, i.e. 10 minutes.

Pro of course includes ROI on PPC campaigns, conversion etc. That's a key reason why it's more expensive, Optimizer doesn't do ROI.

EG
For someone new to web analysis, how do you recommend them getting started on their own. Say the VP of Marketing for a small company, etc.?

JM
I think most people have seen some kind of primitive web stats report by now, analog or similar.

The biggest barrier to getting started is realizing how much web analytics has moved on from this type of thing the type of exploratory analysis you can now perform.

It's so much farther ahead, it's hard to conceive if you're stuck using whatever freeware junk your ISP gives you so getting started first requires that you ignore that stuff. Next, I'd recommend they download ClickTracks Analyzer and throw a logfile at it.

I think people also need to realise that the key to good data is to segment users into different groups and compare them.

Often the old style stats reports are ignored by marketing guys because there's a huge "so what" factor. I have "n" page views. So what?

On the other hand, segmenting into paid vs organic search, I have "x" page views for one, "y" page views for the other. Bingo! Organic search results drive more page views, indicating greater interest in my site--that is compelling.

Sorry to pitch my own product here, but honestly there's nothing else that's so easy to get started with, cheap to buy, and that you can simply download and try

EG
Hey, you're entitled.

JM
(if there is another product, please mention it, I honestly don't know one)

EG
Finally, has [Edward] Tufte returned the favor and started recommending ClickTracks? Do you know him personally?

JM
No way! Actually, I don't think Tufte is a big fan of anything on the computer screen. I always sense that his bias is towards what you can draw by hand in Adobe Illustrator and then print at 1200 DPI

EG
Well, thank you for your time today Mr. Marshall.

John Marshall, CEO of ClickTracks, is a Netscape alumnus who is responsible for two other successful software companies.

Eric Gockel is Principal and Founder of cre8, Inc, a consultancy providing internet strategy, design and development services since 1997.

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