Kaushik Challenges ClickTracks

Avinash Kaushik has challenged Web Analytics vendor ClickTracks to release more advanced features of their free analytics product: ClickTracks Appetizer. In exchange Avinash will be teaching next week’s ClickTracks Seminar: online marketing and web analytics techniques

Here is some background on the ClickTracks/Kaushik Challenge:

The Challenge
We were recently challenged by the author of Occam’s Razor, Avinash Kaushik, to enable more features in Appetizer. The short story is that we agreed, but you might find the ‘why’ and ‘how’ to be interesting—and get a little view of the less-conformist thinking of ClickTracks’ marketing department.

The Dilemma
We’ve never hid the fact that Appetizer is primarily a learning tool and a very useful ‘taste’ rather than a comprehensive web analytics solution. We measure the success of Appetizer by how many people attend our free classes each month. It’s true. Folks who learn good web analytics practices tend to favor (or buy) ClickTracks’ more powerful products. However, if we enable too many features, Appetizer could conceivably eat into sales of our $19/month Analyzer service or our $295 Analyzer software product.

The Answer
So, like a good web analytics team, we decided to do a test. We’d enable the Site Overview in Appetizer for 90 days. After 90 days we’ll measure. If the growth rate of Analyzer continues uninhibited, and we see a spike in attendance in the online classes (in theory, more future buyers), then the Site Overview remains enabled. We also asked Avinash to teach one of the classes.

Personally I think this is a win/win situation. ClickTracks gets an expert Analyst to teach a class in exchange for the enabling of some extra features in ClickTracks appetizer (which is a bonus for end users).

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