Topic: Getting to ROI – The Shift to Results Oriented Google Analytics
Tom McCracken is a 20+ year web industry veteran. He has a blended background ranging across web development, UX, marketing, content strategy, data analysis, and agile project management. His passion is helping organizations leverage technology to drive measurable impact. Tom has consulted on over 100 interactive projects for organizations such as AT&T, U.S. Bank Corp, Simon & Schuster, IBM, Miami Dolphins, NEC, McDonald’s, SMU, Abbott Labs, Pratt & Whitney, ADP, E*TRADE, Nationwide Insurance, and Tektronix. An avid open source contributor, he has built more than two dozen Drupal modules and WordPress plugins. Today, his core focus is developing results-oriented, data-driven tools to enable teams to deliver decisively better web experiences and ROI.
How did you get involved in WordPress?
We originally got involved in WordPress when we used it for our blog back in 2004. We built a plugin called Blog Matrix for our site to enable a multi-author, multi-category blogging. We built some blogs with it from 2005 to 2010, but our work shifted more to Drupal for several years.
More recently we got back into WordPress we got a lot of requests to port an advanced analytics module we built for Drupal to WordPress.
What do you do with WordPress?
Primarily our focus is helping people build more results-oriented, data-driven websites. We are working to build a community around that effort. We don’t build websites in WordPress, our goal is to help those that do, do it better.
What has your experience with the WordPress community been like?
The community is great. I have spent a lot of time in both the Drupal and WordPress communities. They are pretty similar. People are very helpful and passionate.
Why did you want to speak at WordCamp DFW?
Empirical, agile development is very powerful. The methodologies tend to only be used at the enterprise level. WordPress offers a much larger audience with a progressive mindset. Help to spread these concepts in WordPress is an exciting opportunity to make a much bigger impact.
Why did you decide to speak on project management?
There is already a lot of great content about the best way to do a lot of things in WordPress. There is not a whole lot on how to empirically measure what is best. A lot of people talk about how important ROI is, but there is not much on how to implement it. Most people only scratch the surface of what is possible with Google Analytics. Enabling people to unleash the full power of GA around ROI can take web project to a whole new level of success.
What do you hope the audience gets from your talk?
Insight into on why measuring results is so important to the future of websites and their business and a method to make all of their sites results-oriented and data-driven.
Tickets are now on sale for this year’s WordCamp DFW held on Nov. 11-12. There are also plenty of opportunities to sponsor the event or help run it. We hope to see you there!