Omniture Summit ’08 Review & New Seth Godin Book Giveaway!

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I just got back from Omniture Summit ’08 – and what a great experience it was! Taking place up in Omniture’s home city, Salt Lake City (and what a beautiful city it is), I was fascinated by seeing and meeting so many like-minded web analysts and online marketers. During the keynotes (Seth Godin’s and Lance Armstrong’s in particular were great and inspirational) and sessions, there were some big announcements and valuable insights … here were the major ones:

  1. Site Catalyst v.14 launched:
    • Major site interface redesign. This included improving the confusing old style left nav (much easier to find reports now), easier to login between products, added search, A/B date comparisons and more chart types, including a great new ‘bubble’ format. The new interface reminds me a lot of the Google Analytics new interface (which is a good thing!)
    • New community topics and context-sensitive help, also report suite specific forums for users to discuss best practices and news.
    • Improved report and dashboard publishing and distribution, including savable publish lists – great time savers!
  2. State of the art integrated video tracking launched. There was baited web analyst breath for this launch, and this is very timely considering the recent rise and prominence in online video.
  3. Recent aquisitions Offermatica and Touch Clarity were combined into an integrated ‘Test and Target’ solution. This for me was great news, as I am a huge believer in testing and behavioural insight, and this new name puts a greater and more understandable spotlight on this.
  4. Strong, and often underlying themes and focus towards testing and targetting. This was a common theme in sessions, including behavioural insight and targetting, website and email testing, and RIA testing. Ford website tests were discussed in depth by Ford’s keynote speaker. Insightful indeed!
  5. Search Center v3 launched. This includes greater intergration between paid and organic search, better portfolio management and improved usability.
  6. Strong focus on integrating mult-channel marketing. The importance of this was the subject of a great keynote panel debate between analysts, and was discussed extensively during Seth Godin’s keynote speech. Particular attention was given to increased Salesforce.com and Genesis integration in terms of multi-channel marketing analysis.

Overall it was a fantastic conference, made even better by the hilarious Flight of Conchords free show on weds night! Even though, on a light note, the cool free Omniture pens kept closing themselves…. 😉

Free Seth Godin ‘Meatball Sundae’ Book Giveaway: Seth was giving away copies of his great new marketing book, entitled ‘Meatball Sundae‘. And I have 3 copies up for grabs for people who may have missed this conference. All you have to do for a chance to win is register for email updates on this blog, using the signup box in the top right. I will choose the winners at random in 2 weeks and email them using the email address they sign up with. Good luck!