ObservePoint is hiring!
Update: This position has been filled. Welcome to the team, Alan Feuerlein!
We're expanding quickly. Stay tuned for more job listings soon!
Job Opening: Web Application Developer (Entry / Mid 0-5 Years)
Hot Orem-based Startup has a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to get in on the ground floor. The right candidate will work closely with Omniture co-founder John Pestana and his team. Looking for a dynamic, resourceful, flexible engineer whose future is as bright as ours. Must be comfortable working on a variety of projects ranging from front-end UI to back-end server administration. We're working with several blue-chip and Fortune 500 companies, so if you're a rockstar developer with a winning attitude, we want to talk to YOU!
We use a variety of technologies to build and manage our amazing web analytics related products. We're willing to provide some training and time to learn, but in order to be successful here you must already have solid HTML, Javascript, SQL and web scripting skills, as well as an understanding of the MVC architecture. If you know Ruby on Rails you'll have a head start. Experience with PHP, XUL, JSON, XML, Git, Apache, MySQL, Linux, load balancers, networking, server administration and AWS is a bonus.
Got a degree in CS, IT or something else? Score! This is a great place to put your feet on the street, but you'll need more than a sheepskin to get and keep this job. Only resourceful, creative, humble and determined applicants will be considered. You've got to have an entrepreneurial spirit and be self-motivated. This isn't some 9-5 and we're not looking for a desk jockey.
If you think you've got what it takes, do your homework at www.observepoint.com and give us a shout. We'd like to see a portfolio, references, and anything that screams "I'm your guy, give me the job!"
ObservePoint offers an excellent health plan with dental, weekly lunch, a full spread of snacks, regular parties and a killer working environment and some of the most cool and creative people around. We believe that hard work brings big rewards and want to meet others with the same belief.
Position: Web Application Developer (Entry / Mid 0-5 Years)
Hours: Full Time / Part Time
Pay: Salary DOE
Benefits: Health and Dental
Primary Vendor Tag Selector Improves Audit Accuracy
New Feature: Primary Vendor Selection
By default, every SiteAudit will automatically discovers all pages and all supported tags. However, when sites are very large (500,000 pages or more), have complex structures or very heavy pages, a small number of tags may not appear during the audit. For these situations, we've added the "Primary Vendor" feature.
The Primary Vendor Selection feature is completely optional, and if all of the options are left unselected, the audit will complete with the same methodology as always. Primary Vendor Selection adds an extra layer of vigor, and is most useful for large or complex sites, because it forces SiteAudit to check and recheck for the vendor tag you select.
How to Use Primary Vendor Selection
SiteAudit allows you to select the primary vendor for your domain.
On the New Domain page, you’ll see a new section labeled “Primary Vendor.” Selecting any of the checkboxes for that type of tag will tell our system that each tag should be on every page audited. When our system does not detect a required tag, it will check the page up to two more times before determining that a tag is definitely not on the page. This will greatly reduce the number of “false negatives,” which can be caused by many factors including network packet loss, page lag, etc.
CAUTION: Select only the tags that you expect to be on every page of the scan. Because of the additional page checking when the tag is not found, selecting a tag that is not highly implemented will cause the scan to take longer to complete.
ObservePoint Offers New Enhancements
ObservePoint recently released an update to its powerful SiteAudit tool. ObservePoint is committed to providing web analysts with extraordinarily useful and valuable analytics auditing so that they can trust their data. The following features have been added to the most recent release of SiteAudit:
SiteAudit now audits page depth, tag positions, and duplicate tags.
•Pixel Location
Analytics vendors suggest various best practices for the placement of tracking code. It's easy to check pixel positions in SiteAudit - just check a box.
•Duplicate Pixel Detection
Duplication of pixels causes major problems in reporting and inflates data collection costs. SiteAudit automagically identifies duplicate pixels.
•Page Depth Analysis
Page depth often determines page value. Focus on your highest-value pages with Page Depth Analysis - built in to SiteAudit.
The new home screen gives you fast access to the latest events in your account.
•Improved Workflow and User Interface
Easily find and fix issues, then get on to other work with speed and ease.
•User controlled Silent / Debug mode
Users can now choose whether to allow SiteAudit to fire pixels to the vendor, which will automatically populate page views for each tagged page; or to run in silent mode, which cancels each pixel request, so as to not inflate web analytics data.
New Packages are affordable enough for small companies, powerful enough for the largest enterprises.
•Lower Prices
We’ve streamlined our pricing and packages to make it easy to select the right plan for your needs.
•Improved Access to Support
In an effort to consistently improve customer experience, we have added Live Support. If you need to talk to customer / technical support or our sales department, simply click any of the "Live Support" links on our website's header and you will be connected to one of us, right here in the office.
If you don't yet have a SiteAudit account, signup now and get your first two weeks free.
The SiteAudit plugin makes it easy to track down tagging problems at the page level.
In addition to these enhancements to SiteAudit, we recently released a free Firefox plugin that allows you to view any page element (HTML, images, CSS, JS, tags, and flash), inspect load times, diagnose tagging issues, and more. The plugin also enables transaction monitoring features for ObservePoint account holders. Whether or not you are an ObservePoint customer, the plugin is absolutely free. Get it now!
ObservePoint welcomes BPA Worldwide to the family
Bizo and BPA Worldwide join forces to offer industry’s most accurate snapshot of who is visiting B-to-B websites
BPA adds ObservePoint technology to its interactive audit services
Shelton, CT 13 April 2010 – BPA Worldwide has added technology from ObservePoint, a provider of web site tag auditing solutions, to further enhance BPA’s interactive audit services.
Unlike web analytics tools, part of the BPA Interactive audit process involves verifying the integrity of tag placement. Using ObservePoint’s server-side SiteAudit process will systematically analyze every page of a web site to ensure java script tags are placed on each page properly, verify only one tag per analytics tool appears per page and detect those pages that are not tagged at all.
“The relationship with ObservePoint gives us the ability to improve the efficiency of the BPA Interactive audit,” explained Peter Black, BPA’s Senior Vice President, Business Development. “As our audit process involves periodic testing of tag placement, ObservePoint’s SiteAudit increases our capacity to test and gives us greater flexibility with the timing of those tests. With nearly 600 sites in our Interactive Audit program, ObservePoint gives us another service enhancement to meet the growing demands of our members.”
Robert Seolas, ObservePoint Co-Founder, added, “We are pleased to be working with BPA as they capitalize on our expertise with tag technology. Our SiteAudit will contribute to the continued accuracy and efficiency of BPA Interactive audit process.”
According to Black, the ObservePoint technology will add another level of verification to the audit process. “In listening to the needs of the market, our interactive audit enforces standardization of tagging, metrics and verification process. As a result, all BPA Interactive audited sites compete on a level playing field.”
Recognizing the ObservePoint technology can provide quality control benefits beyond the audit, BPA will make the service available to members at a preferred rate to be announced shortly.
ObservePoint hosts Utah’s first Web Analytics Wednesday
We set out with the goal of providing a venue for analysts – who are highly active on twitter and in other social networks – to put faces to names. It’s great to get together with like-minded individuals and talk shop, sports, and anything else.
We’re proud to say that we came close to matching the attendance for SFO’s WAW event that was also on Wednesday. With 77 signed up to attend (and some others showing up at the last minute), we are very happy with the turnout. From the feedback we got, everybody had a great time as well.
Check out our Flickr Photostream
Interested in attending Web Analytics Wednesday in the future? ObservePoint is hosting them during all of Q1 2010.
Hope to see you at WAW in the future!
Data Integrity: Actionable Analytics Fundamentals
Across all analytical marketing specializations, data integrity is guarded and protected like money in a vault. A major advantage of web analytics over traditional market research methods is the ability to collect and analyze alldata, not just sample data. But what happens when web analytics fails to collect all data?
The Asterisk: An ambiguous enemy
During the X Change show this past August, I had the chance to talk to many analytics pros who work in the trenches every day. One story in particular caught my attention.
This analyst was a very successful consultant for a major web analytics vendor for several years. He recently landed a new position working for a rapidly growing SaaS company. One of the first times he sat through a presentation from his team to the executives, he noticed asterisks on several slides. After the presentation, he asked the team about the asterisks, and they told him that some of the data contained anomalies, and the asterisks were placed in the presentation to caveat some of the hypothesis. I can imagine how disappointing it was for this analyst to see asterisks up on the projection screen, watering down the data.
Welcome to the Real World
I think we’ve all experienced this sort of disappointment. It’s like learning that Santa Claus isn’t real; it’s innocence lost; the kind stuff that makes nice people become bitter, cynical, and jaded. It’s having your data underminedwith an asterisk because somebody else messed up!
The good news is with some process improvement, gaps in data can be prevented, and every analyst can be confident about the recommendations they present. But how?
The problem is that web analytics aren’t front and center in requirements or processes in many companies. All too often, the analyst is left out of the conversation. When that happens, who is looking out for the data? It isn’t the content team, it’s not the director of marketing, and it definitely isn’t IT. How can an organization make data-driven decisions without knowing all the data is collected correctly?
The fact is, when the right JS isn’t on the most important pages, your organization will never get the data it needs just to stay in the game. A recent Forrester study even indicated that 45% of analytics customers worry about accurate collection of data.
How do you know when you’re missing data? Sometimes, you will see skewed or missing data in your analytics suite. But I’ve found that too often, some data isn’t being collected, and it’s nearly impossible to tell it isn’t being collected! It’s the classic case of the unknown unknown. Even if data is flowing, it is useless if the JS isn’t configured correctly (custom variables not populating, for example). The result: an asterisk on your PowerPoint slide and ammo for management to shoot your hypothesis down.
Bottom line: tracking down individual data collection problems, each on individual pages, without any real enterprise-level tools, in an environment where you don’t know what you don’t know, is like trying to find a needle in a haystack, on the hot side of Mars with an FAO Schwartz telescope. Absurd!
Improving data through planning and process
The adoption of some simple practices can go a long way toward improving your data. The assistance of a few purpose-built tools can actually provethat the data collected is complete; ergo valid and actionable. Personally, I’m a fan of this three-pronged approach: Development QA, Quarterly Audits, and Continuous Monitoring. Here’s how it works:
Development QA
- After pages are built in dev, use a tool to audit the analytics implementation on each page.
- After the pages move to staging servers, all pages should get a complete “pre-flight test”. The auditing tool should be run in live mode, allowing server calls to be made. The success of these server calls should be checked in the analytics solution.
- Audit new pages after they are pushed out to production to ensure the implementation is still intact and ready for prime time.
Quarterly Auditing
Every page over the entire site should be audited quarterly to confirm analytics are working correctly, to identify any problems, and to show complete implementation for reporting purposes. Specific items to watch for are:
- All pages are tagged
- Pixels are loading
- Custom variables are populating with correct data
Continuous Monitoring
Landing pages, checkout process, unsubscribe forms, and other mission-critical pages or multi-step processes should be continuously monitored to ensure the pixels always fire. This prevents long periods of data loss.
Truly, this is why I co-founded ObservePoint: to give you the tools you need to increase data integrity, get traction in your organization, and relieve the frustrations inherent in the craft.
Outcomes
With some forethought and the right tools, you can make huge strides toward ousting the asterisk. Processes, such as I’ve discussed here, can remove much of the ambiguity and doubt in analytics data. By confiscatingthe weapons that management uses against analytics recommendations, you can help your organization make use of the insights you find. You’ll valuate Web Analytics to management, and gain funding for new initiatives.
Learn More about SiteAudit
Affiliate Industry’s Important Players Turn to ObservePoint
ObservePoint's uptime monitoring services provide comprehensive, transparent third-party monitoring of URL, transactions and redirects designed for affiliate networks.
OREM, Utah (July 8, 2009) ObservePoint Inc., the leader in website, URL, and pixel monitoring, announces strategic alliances with BlooSky, Peppperjam.com, GetAds, OfferWeb, GMB Direct and ROI Rocket. ObservePoint was chosen because of their innovative monitoring platform, now in version 2.4. ObservePoint is gaining popularity as uniquely oriented toward the affiliate marketing industry, with a key benefit of providing significant ROI boosts for networks using its services.
“Our roots in the affiliate industry give us unique insights into the problems that plague affiliate managers. We want to eliminate the pain and frustration associated with down offers and broken redirects,” commented Rob Seolas, co-founder of ObservePoint. Pat Avery of GetAds said “In this market, it's more important now than ever to be sure every single offer achieves its potential value. We are excited to be working with ObservePoint in pursuit of that goal.”
Some publishers have recently started to offer their own internal monitoring solutions. ObservePoint's uptime monitoring is third-party; ObservePoint provides completely impartial, transparent reports of downtime and responsiveness on any URL. With ObservePoint, affiliate managers can be empowered with knowledge of which party has the outage, enabling quicker recovery and greater accountability down the line from publisher, to network, to advertiser.
Nicole Thomas of GMB Direct said “We decided on third-party monitoring for several reasons. ObservePoint gives us the power of knowing if an Advertiser's offer is down before they may know it themselves. It gives us peace of mind knowing that our offers and network are being monitored 24/7. Because we know of any challenges immediately we are often the ones alerting the Advertiser while simultaneously communicating important information to our affiliates. This immediate transfer of information adds to our credibility and this trust adds up to a more profitable relationship for us. We have significantly reduced the headaches that go along with downtime. We've added value to our publishers and advertisers relationship with us and improved our bottom line all at the same time. For us it was a win win situation.”
The practice of using third-party monitoring tools is a fresh idea, and it's gaining momentum within the industry. When an offer isn't monitored, affiliate managers can be confronted with the unfortunate discovery that an offer has gone down only by finding out after the fact. Down offers create losses of time and money. The loss can be in the “tens of thousands of dollars … even more over time,” says Matt Frary of ROI Rocket. “When a publisher finds out about down offers before you do, this can hurt your relationship, and as a result, they can end up dropping you.” ObservePoint has set out to help affiliate networks avoid such scenarios.
“If your publishers and advertisers know you are monitoring them, that should give them a good idea that you are serious and they need to follow suit.” Gary Livingston, who recently left an affiliate network to work for ObservePoint commented. “Many of us at ObservePoint are former affiliate managers, and we've created a solution that we wish we would have had in the past. ObservePoint can virtually eliminate the frustrations associated with downtime.”
“ObservePoint is excited to welcome BlooSky, Pepperjam.com, GetAds, OfferWeb, GMB and ROI Rocket into the family. Joining long-time customers Ward Media, Market Leverage, UpSellit.com, Think Partnership, and Cutting Edge Media, we are improving the affiliate industry and the greater internet ad industry one URL at a time,” said Rob Seolas, former President of iLead Media and co-founder of ObservePoint.
For more information on how ObservePoint can help improve ROI through its focused business solutions, including uptime monitoring and analytics tag auditing, visit www.observepoint.com or contact an ObservePoint account executive at (801) 717-9361.
About ObservePoint
ObservePoint helps companies increase their ROI through powerful, user-friendly website, URL, and pixel monitoring services. ObservePoint helps businesses stay online in the most straightforward, easy to understand way possible. The ObservePoint Suite from the ground up with one clear vision: Build the best monitoring solution in the world.
ObservePoint Releases Major Update
Includes significant improvements to user interface, adds performance boost for all accounts.
OREM, Utah (July 8, 2009) ObservePoint Inc., the leader in website, URL, and pixel monitoring, today announced a major update to their product suite. Numerous improvements have been made over the entire product line to enhance functionality, usability, performance, and overall user experience. “We're pleased with the improvements that version 2.4 makes to our offerings. The user interface is more polished, and significant optimizations have been made to the behind-the-scenes processes. Users will experience faster turnarounds on reports and scans and even better reliability in monitoring. Best of all, we've got a rock-solid foundation to build on to add more of the functionality our customers are asking for,” said Rob Seolas, co-founder of ObservePoint.
“The number one must-have characteristic of any monitoring system is stability,” said Tyler Broadbent, lead developer at ObservePoint. “Ensuring rock-solid stability was a major goal for this release, and with the optimizations we made, we've approximately doubled our scan speeds for SiteAudit and secured virtually 100% uptime with Monitoring. That's the gold standard.” These improvements were made by implementing intelligent resource management algorithms and a new failover system.
Simplified Pricing
“We receive lots of great input from our customers and other big players in the web analytics industry. When we asked what they want out of a tag audit system, the message was clear: flexibility,” commented Michelle Farr, Director of Business Development at ObservePoint. “Flexibility to audit sites on-demand or on schedule. Flexibility to use page-scans as needed. Flexibility to sign up for annual service intervals.”
Version 2.4 makes significant changes to the way URL and SiteAudit services are allocated. SiteAudit users now have the flexibility to run analytics implementation reports on a regular schedule (varying from daily to semi-annually) or on an ad-hoc basis. Michelle continues: “Running scans on-demand is very useful for Analytics Consultancies. SiteAudit can be used as an implementation tool, reducing the time it takes to accurately and completely implement.“ After the initial implementation, scans can be scheduled to routinely check up on the implementation and safeguard against updates that break analytics code.
SiteAudit pricing is now based on a bucket system, in which every plan includes a certain amount of page scans available at any time. This allows for large, comprehensive scans over an entire domain during implementation; then smaller, targeted maintenance scans over regular intervals. “We leave it to the customer to decide how they want to use their scans - virtually no limits,” remarks Michelle Farr.
User Interface Enhancements
Version 2.4 introduces many user interface enhancements designed to improve the usability and aesthetics of the ObservePoint product suite. Starting from the signup process and continuing all the way through into detailed report pages, current customers will appreciate the softer look and feel, quicker response, and added flexibility of Monitoring and SiteAudit. New customers will appreciate the simplicity of new account activation, the options for free demo accounts, and the straightforward interface for setting up URLs and Domains for monitoring and SiteAudit. Account summaries have been completely redesigned to provide a “dashboard” interface with one-click access to the most important items.
John Pestana, former President of Omniture on ObservePoint: “After experiencing the challenges of Web Analytics for so many years, we set out to build the best monitoring and tag audit solution ever. The latest iteration makes the world's best even better. SiteAudit has been well received all around the web analytics community, and now they'll love it even more.”
Version 2.4 is considered a major incremental update. All current ObservePoint customers are upgraded to the newest version free of charge. For more information about ObservePoint, ObservePoint's products or ObservePoint's competitive reseller program, please contact Rob Seolas at (801) 717-9361.
About ObservePoint
ObservePoint helps companies increase their ROI through powerful, user-friendly website, URL, and pixel monitoring services. ObservePoint helps businesses stay online in the most straightforward, easy to understand way possible. The ObservePoint Suite from the ground up with one clear vision: Build the best monitoring solution in the world.
ObservePoint adds INC. 500 Fastest growing company Pepperjam
Monday, March 1, 2009 - OREM, UT (Business Wire) - ObservePoint, Inc, the leader in website, URL, and pixel monitoring, announced today Pepperjam, an industry leading interactive agency and affiliate network, has enlisted ObservePoint to increase revenues through performance and responsiveness monitoring across their cutting-edge affiliate marketing network - Pepperjam Network. ObservePoint's URL, Pixel and Uptime Monitoring is the industry's most advanced platform for tracking the responsiveness and uptime of web pages, offers, redirects, and tracking pixels.
Pepperjam, a three-time Inc. Magazine fastest growing company, expects to continue improving the value of their offers across their network with ObservePoint monitoring. Using ObservePoint's various charts and trend reports, Pepperjam is able to identify problems previously unknown and improve their worth to their publishers and advertisers. About ObservePoint Online businesses want the security of knowing their sites are responding at top performance at all times, so their storefront is open whenever customers come calling.
ObservePoint helps businesses stay online in the most straightforward, easy to understand way possible. The ObservePoint Suite from the ground up for this purpose. Keeping sites running smoothly keeps the cash flowing. ObservePoint was founded with one clear vision: Build the best monitoring solution in the world.
About Pepperjam Network: Pepperjam Network is a next generation affiliate marketing network that provides advertisers and publishers with industry leading pay-for-performance tracking, reporting, communication, and payment solutions. Pepperjam Network is a division of Pepperjam, a full-service internet marketing agency recognized by Inc. Magazine for the last three consecutive years as one of the fastest growing businesses in the United States. Learn more at www.pepperjamnetwork.com.
About Pepperjam: Pepperjam offers a full range of professional marketing management services in the areas of pay-per-click, search-engine optimization, affiliate marketing, mobile marketing, and online media planning and buying. Since 1999 Pepperjam has developed a reputation for being one of the most innovative, aggressive, and effective internet marketing agencies in the business. Learn more at www.pepperjam.com.
ObservePoint SiteAudit Goes From Public Beta to Full Production
Wednesday, February 18, 2009 - OREM, UT (Business Wire) - ObservePoint, the leader in website, URL, and pixel monitoring, announced today the release of the full production version of SiteAudit. “SiteAudit is a revolutionary product for the monitoring industry,” says John Pestana, Co-founder of ObservePoint. “SiteAudit analyzes the script on each page of a domain and verifies the presence and completeness of analytic code. This adds exceptional value to any analytics implementation.”
SiteAudit is intended for use by customers of any web analytics platform. Patent Pending technology analyzes the code on each page in a domain and generates reports showing the presence of analytic code; showing which pages have multiple vendor tags, which pages are missing key variables, and more.
“Many companies outsource their analytic implementation,” says Rob Seolas, Co-founder of ObservePoint. “But once the initial setup is done and the contract is over, who maintains all of that code? SiteAudit puts domain owners in control by showing them what's working and what's not. Instead of sifting through thousands of lines of code, SiteAudit analyzes it and generates the reports automatically.”