This week Eric Peterson published a blog post titled ‘Finally! Standards Come to Web Analytics.’ I am very appreciative of Eric generating much needed debate about this extremely important topic because if we don’t do something ourselves, the standards will be dictated to us, and I don’t think any of us want.
Eric says that Google Analytics has become the de facto standard for our industry simply because GA is “the world’s most popular and widely deployed web analytics solution.” If we subscribe to this argument, then the title of the post should have been ‘Finally! Standards Come to Web Analytics…..AGAIN!!!!’ as we have been here before, there is nothing new here.
What Google Analytics has done, publishing a Web Analytics Glossary, is no different than what every other vendor has already done in the past. So why isn’t the glossary that Omniture published 5 years ago, when nearly every Fortune 500 company had Omniture deployed, the de facto standard? Why isn’t the glossary that Webtrends published, before Omniture was even born, the de facto standard?
If the answer to that question is that WT or Omniture or Unica or any other vendor never had the market penetration that GA has, then I would argue that market share shouldn’t dictate who defines standards. Under this argument, all web standards should be defined by the Internet Explorer team (as it has historically been the worlds most popular and widely deployed web browser) — I don’t want that, do you?
What makes standards so valuable and meaningful, is that they are universally accepted amongst all users and vendors. If a vendor, such as Google (and to be fair to Google, they are not taking this stance as far as I am aware), attempts to unilaterally create industry standards, the question that Eric asks at the end of his post is the correct question, does the community at large, both end users and vendors, agree with the GA’s standards?
For Google, or any other vendor attempting to go this alone, this becomes a very dangerous proposition in that if the community feels that the vendor is presenting standards that will immediately benefit them, and not necessarily anyone else, they will quickly lose credibility. That is why historically standards have been created through community collaboration, and yes, it’s damn hard to do but just because it’s hard doesn’t mean it’s the wrong approach.
I love Eric’s post and take it as a challenge to stop being so damn lazy and make the change we so wish to see happen and continue to work collaboratively as a community and not get distracted by every Zach Sawyer that transfers here from rich, expensive, car driving, high school.
Adam Greco
Emer Kirrane
Eric Peterson
Evan LaPointe
Kevin Rogers
Michele Hinojosa
Pritesh Patel
Rudi Shumpert
3 Comments
“The community” is awfully nebulous. This starts to feel a bit like some economic theory stuff — “the community” will benefit from consistent standards, but no individual will benefit to the point where it makes serious economic sense to invest in the effort and then push it through to vendors (who are naturally conflicted by standards — they lower switching costs, which is a double-edged sword).
You make the statement that “historically, standards have been created through community collaboration.” I’ve actually mentally been noodling on that trying to think through good analogies here. The W3C…developed standards for HTML and CSS that have never been fully and consistently put into practice (but did they at least get things closer in alignment than they would have been without the effort?). There are scads of examples of government-driven (with community input) standards…which, hmmm, could kill two birds at once by establishing privacy standards along with metrics standards…but government moves, methinks, too slow to keep pace with evolving digital needs.
Where did the 3G and 4G standards for mobile service come from? What about 802.11xx? Maybe those are different, because they’re technical spec standards that are required for cross-compatibility.
Eric’s point that standards are meaningless without adoption is a good one. We can fret about the fact that market penetration is a dangerous way to dub a standards-maker, but, presumably, market penetration correlates to some level of functionality and usefulness (I’m not denying that “free” is a big driver there, too, but it’s not like GA is a junk product). And, market penetration correlates to penetration of familiarity.
No matter how I look at, I keep coming back to feeling like Eric’s onto something. It’s funny that you reference Internet Explorer. I have a cousin who worked on the IE team for years (moved to Google a year ago), and he used to talk about how one of their *key* focusses with each release of IE was to “not break the internet.” His point was that, if IE suddenly became 100% w3C spec-compliant with a new browser release, there would be utter mayhem. So, like IE or not (I don’t), Microsoft did take the issue of “functional standards” at least somewhat seriously.
Ohhhh…I’m starting to envision a recurring topic in NYC next week…
Thanks for the comment, Tim. Great stuff to think about and I will be first to admit that I don’t have all the answers.
Perhaps I poorly worded my post, in fact it’s almost a certainty, I don’t want to pretend that these things magically happen in a vacuum. Far from it. It takes ongoing collaboration. Back in the early 2000′s I was part of a team, which was made up from volunteers from many large corporations, that was working on defining SOAP standards. It is to date, the hardest project I have EVER worked on. It was by the community, in that the team was made up of representatives from vendors, users, etc. but largely driven by corporations but not unilaterally.
So I would love your feedback on your point, which I agree with, about adoption. Why are we, or should we adopt GA’s standard now, when this has been done before by every vendor and by our own association? Just because everyone with a wordpress blog has GA on it? I surly hope not.
Great post Jason. You bring up some great points. Would love to see some standards come to fruition.
I think more standards would mean tools inside and outside of WA could use the standard to further innovation. Right now in the innovation community one of the big subjects is how bureaucracy can empower innovation. Standards seem like a big hunk of bureaucracy, but can add some organization to innovation. Without some organization there is more chaos (Just can’t let the bureaucracy take over).
Seems like there are many standards that need to be worked out. Wouldn’t the community need to work with other specific groups? And doesn’t it seem like the WAA is best positioned to encourage collaboration?
1. WA Tool Standards
WAA could help enable cross-vendor collaboration on standards in the name of innovation?
2. Implementation Standards
Tag Management Systems, could handle this quickly if the independent TMS providers built out standards outside of the vendors. Not to mention it could mean higher adoption outside of the vendors.
3. Industry Standards
Seems like this one is up to the industry itself. Something that WAA could help out with?
Would love to see some standards come to fruition. I can’t speak for my employer Tealeaf, but would love to help with any standards definitions where appropriate.
-Ryan Ekins