Although we should have taken a break after finally launching the new improved user interface last week we got stuck right back into it! Check out the new features and enhancements we released this week as well as the respective screen shots below.

Over the long weekend, we received several alert notifications from Omniture for various clients - we monitor metrics such as hourly unique visitors and set email notifications if there are values outside the expected range.

To confirm this, we checked the installations for clients we have based in New Zealand. As we suspected, we found the same pattern of 0 recorded visits for the previous week at the same time, which was when New Zealand started Daylight Savings Time.

Omniture alerts from Sunday morning about low values can be disregarded. Visits during those hours generally land in 3am-4am in the reports, so the daily totals should be intact.

We're a bit slow in posting about the next version of Adobe SiteCatalyst. We haven't been asleep to it, but we also haven't had a direct reason to look into the detail of it. Now that we've got clients scheduled to move over, we've got that excuse.

Much of the change going on in this release is under the hood. Omniture are swapping out the infrastructure that drives data display in SiteCatalyst and swapping in an entirely new back-end. The new infrastructure will be more stable, more scalable, cheaper to both operate and, most importantly, cheaper to change.

Adobe may have seemed asleep as Google Analytics added more and more features that have been creeping up on the Adobe product offering, but in fact they've been busy building this new infrastructure. The new back-end changes the economics of Omniture's business, allowing them to react quickly to competitive changes in the market. Expect to see the conveyor belt of cool new stuff to accelerate as they learn how to make the most of their new toy.

Adobe hides it well, but the existing SiteCatalyst infrastructure is creaky and expensive. Remember that Adobe built a system capable of dealing with massive data volumes in very new ways before the current wave of interest in NoSQL and MapReduce. Along the way they've had to hack in fixes and work-arounds to add new functionality. This new release shows they've learnt some lessons and have taken the pain to build new foundations.

So enough about the pipeline, what do you get straight away that's going to make it worth the wait?

• Real-time segmentation
  What is your customer behaviour in only a single segment? Previously this required complex Data Warehouse queries, ASI slots or Discover. Now you can do it on-the-fly, slicing any report with a specific segment.
• Unique Visitors on any timeframe
  How many times have you had to explain that you can't grab seven Daily UV numbers and get a Weekly UV number? Nor can you change the reporting week from the Admin setting. No longer an issue. The report period is now the UV period. Awesome!
• Full subrelations
  Break down any conversion variable by any other eVar.
• Trend multiple metrics
  It's always been a bit odd that you couldn't see Page Views alongside Unique Visitors trended on the same graph. Now you can!
• Processing Rules
  A cut down version of VISTA allows you to push smarts into the data collection process. Re-map variables, pull data from one field, slice it up and push it into other fields. Very very cool.
• Data Warehouse, Discover and SiteCatalyst, together at last
  Segments you create in one product are available in the others. Finally!
• Video integrated properly
  Earlier versions seemed to have video reports as a bolted-on feature, not terribly well integrated elsewhere. In v15, videos are just an eVar, video players are just another eVar, what happens to videos are just events. And it's all available in Data Warehouse, Discover and everywhere else.

So when do I move over?
  

There's a few complex dependencies to when you can move to the new infrastructure, and some features haven't and won't be implemented. There's no ASI slots in the new version, but the real-time segmentation may solve the reason you use it anyway, and better. Video is still in beta and will require some changes. Your data will have to be moved into the new infrastructure, and you won't get all these featured on your old data.

Last month the Chrome developers announced a new feature, Instant Pages, to speed up page loads after Google searches, and elsewhere on the web. I hadn't paid much attention to it until I noticed Niall Kennedy's comments on it and nearly choked on my morning porridge. Here's how it works, including some detail on its impact on web analytics.

When you do a search in Google using the latest versions of Chrome, the search results page can include a special header to tell Chrome to pre-load the top result pages. Chrome will then go ahead and load, in the background, those pages. It downloads the page, all the dependent stylesheets, images and JavaScript files. And executes the JavaScript. The user may or may not click through to the page.

That last bit is important. If your web analytics automatically fires on page load, it means you'll be recording a page view when potentially the user didn't actually see it. To fix this, Niall Kennedy suggests a fairly straightforward test to ensure your web analytics only loads when it should. Integrating this into your analytics shouldn't be too hard, though it will require some changes. At some point it's fairly likely that the analytics vendors will do this inside their own libraries, or at least create a standard way to do it.

If you are an analytics professional with at least 2 years of work experience in data-intensive roles (preferably in a digital/direct markering environment) who would like to get into big data, web analytics and data driven marketing then you should apply. More experienced analysts and marketers are welcome to apply as well.

+ Keen interest in all things web analytics and online optimisation

+ Basic understanding of marketing principles provides a head start
+ Entrepreneurial spirit, business or marketing degree would be good 

+ Experience dealing with large and complex datasets a must have

+ Proven ability to turn data into insights and actionable recommendations

+ Ability to visualise and confidently present insights to key stakeholders

+ Ability to manage complex projects from start to finish a great advantage

+ Experience with business intelligence tools apart from Excel a bonus

+ Experience in dashboard design and development would be beneficial

+ Experience with either Tableau or Spotfire software would be fantastic

+ Experience with advanced statistical analysis and software a bonus 

+ Experience with Omniture and Google Analytics would be useful
+ Basic understanding of SQL and data warehousing would be good
+ Flexibility, lateral thinking and attention to detail are crucial
+ Ability to respond to client deadlines when necessary
+ Advanced Excel, Word and PowerPoint skills essential

+ Exposure to a growing list of interesting blue chip clients

+ Highly flexible working hours in a dynamic team environment
+ Young start-up with a "work hard, play hard" company attitude
+ Training on industry leading analytics and marketing platforms
+ Freedom to experiment with emerging technologies and new tools
+ Plenty of development and career opportunities in fast growing business
+ And of course you get a salary, maybe even a bonus plus other perks

If the above sounds interesting, please email us at jobs@datalicious.com so we can have a look at your resume and arrange a quick initial phone interview to ask you a few questions before we meet for a proper interview.