Some things in Life make us go “Holy Crap!” the first time we encounter them: The Pacer, the fax machine, the Mac, the Web, the iPhone, David Blaine, my wife, the Matrix. After some time, they become normal and cease to awe us (except David Blaine). Our world now changes so fast, that what wowed us a year ago is as ordinary today as flossing (OK, that one still feels ackward to me). But before things get to be lame, and stop exciting us, we go through a stage of amazement, with deep down a feeling of touching the magical.
Today we finally learned a little more about NextStage Analytics’ paradigm-changing technology in a short whitepaper. Not that we’re finally getting a peak, not yet, but they announced that their now mythical approach to analyzing Web site visitors had been very thoroughly audited by external firms. In a well-constructed test (scientific paper to be published), their application could predict visitors’ gender and age, based only on their navigation patterns (if I understand correctly). How well did they score? Rather well (!): 98% for age, and over 99% for gender !
Holy Crap!
One can only imagine what else they’ll be able to come up with! Imagine detecting, on the spot, with similar accuracy, that a visitor is a hot prospect! We don’t know yet if they will be able to achieve that, but I guess this is in some form or another on the agenda.
I’ll admit, I’m a bit skeptical. Well, I know they’ve got audited and all, but how can they do it?? This is one company I will definitely keep under my radar.
For now, without asking your visitors, you will be able to know their age and their gender.
I wish angels used the Web; that would finally solve a very old debate…
Umm…we already have a report that determines if someone is a hot prospect or not. “Attention, Engagement and Trust: The Internet Trinity and Websites” at http://www.bizmediascience.com/2007/10/attention_engagement_and_trust.html
You can go through my Attention, Engagement, Cognition, etc., archives and find related stuff.
I wouldn’t want you to think we were falling behind. – Joseph
Hi Joseph
Happy to see that rabbit is already out of the hat! I didn’t know about that article, not knowing by heart everything you guys publish.
I now stand corrected!
Hey Jacques, thanks for your time writing this post. :)
I am also very impressed with this NextStage Analytics predction feature.
It’s wonderful if we don’t need to wait for the visitors to answer some kind of form to be able to know (or predict, huh?) their gender or age.
Some companies already do great on having a different version of the page for each gender. Will NextStage provide ways to help analysts on making tests based on the predicted data?
Well, would be just a matter of time, right? :)
Best,
@diogenespassos