Thursday 30 April 2009

Moneyspyder and Engineyard make sweet music

At Moneyspyder, we started developing our Ruby on Rails Ecommerce system nearly three years ago. As we progressed through the prototyping stage we recognised that we needed a serious hosting partner who had good Rails experience.

We know we are great when it comes to Ecommerce strategy and Ecommerce technology - our clients tell us! We didn't want to divert our attention away from our core business so we needed a fully outsourced infrastructure team. Someone who could support us. Someone who we could work with to grow our product and share in our success.

There was a clear winner in the market place: Engine Yard.

Read more about our partnership and how we grew as a company on the Engineyard Q & A section.

Saturday 4 April 2009

Google Analytics Consultants - why work with them?

Moneyspyder has been a Google Analytics Authorised Consultant (GAAC) for a while now. We have worked with a number of clients on Google Analytics, Google Adwords and Google Website Optimiser. We have met a few prospective clients who ask, quite rightly, 'Why do I need to bring Google Consultants in to improve my site?'. Here are a few points as to why you should think about Google Analytics Authorised Consultants as a value proposition rather than a cost...

Bill Hunt, CEO of Global Strategies International has been quoted as saying 'Eight out of 10 implementations of web analytics solutions are incorrectly set up.'

Google Analytics Consultants will know what a best practice Google Analytics implementation looks like. Being a Google Analytics Authorised Consultant requires up-to-date knowledge of what is best practice.

So, the first step is to get your Google Analytics implementation properly audited by Google Aanalytics Consultants. You can only rely on your Google Analytics data to make decisions if it is accurate and precise. Your data can only be as accurate and precise as the quality of your implementation.

I've blogged previously on the subject of keeping focused when using Google Analytics. This is true in terms of both setup and usage. You remain focused on your core business - play to your strengths. Let the Google Consultants play to their's in order to maximise your returns.

Consider the best practice Google Analytics implementation; you should not divert your focus away from your business, your site and your customer's experience in order to be a Google Analytics Expert. Let someone else develop the latest techniques for gathering and analysing Google Analytics data.

Similarly, you know your business better than the Google Consultant - you tell them what your primary goals are so that they can develop your business KPIs with you and then advise how to track them using Google Analytics.

Google Conultants are the right people to advise on the best custom reporting and segmentation techniques. Use them as guides in the vast arena of Google Analytics Reporting capabilities. Less really can be more when considering KPI reporting. The less time you spend searching for the answers to your key questions, the more time you have to reflect and act on those answers - think about the aggregation of marginal gains and how you might approach them one your own and with a Google Consultant.