The Clickthinking Blog | Scent Optimisation

At the recent eMetrics Summit in Washington my Certification committee ran an open group test of our “3 years in the making” web analyst certification. I’m fortunate to be the chairman fo this committee and have worked with Jim Novo, Jim Sterne, Anil Batra, Daniel Weisberg and many others.

The test was a roaring success and is paving the road for the launch of the official certification during the first half of 2010. There were a number of key insights gained from this open test that I will share with you in the coming weeks.

What we, at Clickthinking, have suspected for some time now is that web analysts and digital companies as a whole tend to be very focused on the campaign, the short term drive to quickly get ten thousand people on a mailing list and then the analysis of that short term effort follows.

What is lacking is the longer term plan – what to do with the ten thousand people, how to grow that number to 50 000, 100 000 and upwards. What is lacking is a platform that can last beyond the next campaign and the in-depth analysis of those efforts – analysis that is followed by recommendations, a test platform for testing these recommendations, the implementation of the successful changes and the continuation of this process.

We’ve definitely seen proof of this theory in some of the initial results from our open group certification test.

We’ve been busy
During the past three years, my committee has been very busy creating a framework to be used as the underlying knowledge base for any web analyst hoping to be certified through the only globally recognised web analytics body, the Web Analytics Association, as well as the certification test that will assess how good you really are.

You can download the framework from the WAA website here:
http://www.webanalyticsassociation.org/education/certification/

We believe that our certification test will not only be the gold standard in web analyst certification, but our feedback from employers indicate that our certification will be a major decision factor during their recruitment processes. We also have the likes of Omniture, Webtrends and Google backing our certification efforts.

For more information about the WAA, or to become a member, go to:
http://www.webanalyticsassociation.org

We are very proud to announce that we  won three awards including the prestigious Best in Show in the visual appeal category for our recent work on &Beyond. With over 3000 international entries, only 30 were awarded best in show and Clickthinking were the only winners from Africa. In addition to the best in show, Clickthinking were also awarded a gold award for work in Travel and a silver for use of photography.

The W³ is sanctioned and judged by the International Academy of the Visual Arts, an invitation‐only body consisting of top‐tier professionals from a “Who’s Who” of acclaimed media, interactive, advertising, and marketing firms. IAVA members include executives from organizations such as Alloy, Brandweek, Coach, Disney, The Ellen Degeneres Show, Estee Lauder, Fry Hammond Barr, HBO, Monster.com, MTV, Polo Ralph Lauren, Sotheby’s Institute of Art, Victoria’s Secret, Wired, and Yahoo!.

Earlier in the year, Clickthinking and &Beyond were also honoured and nominated for the Webbys in New York.

Facebook.com is the most visited website second to Google on the internet today. It cannot be denied that the volumes are there, but when it comes to its value as a marketing channel it is often questioned for quality and relevance.

Today I came across some surprising Facebook demographics indicating that the primary Facebook audience is neither socialite school girls nor bored mothers at home. The facebook.com audience is in fact one of the most educated and affluent sectors namely young, graduated, employed males.

For confirmation I compared the demographics of reuters.com which attracts a similar target market and is a respected advertising platform, see BlackBerry advertisements below:

The demographics for these two sites are startlingly similar. The only real difference is the fact that the facebook.com audience is younger. However this is a positive indicator to the longevity of the site’s influence.

(http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/facebook.com)

Take out: Facebook doesn’t only perform in terms of large volumes of visitors, but it also holds significant potential to reach the educated and affluent members of society. The only question then remains: Is the social environment the place where your market WANTS to interact with you? The web is all about individual control these days after all.

I had the privilege of visiting Washington recently for the Africa US-Business Summit.

One of the projects that we worked on (&Beyonds web strategy) was showcased and presented by Frances Mendoza from &Beyond.

Without question, the highlight of our trip was the appearance of Hillary Clinton as she addressed the audience regarding trade relationships between continents and within Africa. She also highlighted the need for strong government leadership both from within Africa and from those investing in Africa.

Key takeouts:

Time to move beyond stereotypes that paint Africa as a land of poverty, disease, conflict and the treatment of Africa as a charity case. I see this as pertinent to us and similar service providers where we need to challenge perceptions that services and delivery out of Africa are inferior to companies operating within developed markets.

The need for strong African leadership. It is unrealistic to expect companies to be attracted to the States with failed or weak leadership, crime or civil unrest. We also need to play our part here by acknowledging and highlighting the success stories.

Finally, the international agency who represents South African Airways also presented which lead to me to the following question. Why is our national carrier utilizing skills outside of our borders? Are the local online marketing and digital agencies not up to scratch?

Considering some of the awards and accolades of late as well as reviewing their organic search campaign, I would seriously question this policy.

A large group of the Clickthinking team attended the Loeries. It’s the first time that we submitted work for the awards and were fortunate to have all three projects qualify as finalists (The conversion team are happy with the 100% conversion rate).

&Beyond won a Bronze Loerie following the accreditation that the project received as a Webby honouree and nominee in New York. With the main focus on usability and conversion, it’s great to also get acknowledged from a creative perspective. Well done to Jo and the creative team.

Draft FCB won a silver Loerie for Vodacom’s Player 23. Clickthinking were responsible for the digital modules and digital strategy. Well done to Grant and his team at Draft FCB!