It’s nice that the general subject matter of the talks and conversations sounds somehow more professional. Roughly speaking, there’s less “SEO for beginners” than before.
The general trend for online stores: customer segmentation, working with databases, behavioral marketing, work on logistics. The market is growing up.
True enough, Owox isn’t the same without Vladislav Flaks, who runs it ;)
The web analytics talk from the people at Owox was more or less interesting, but I’d have liked the cases to be more illustrative, I guess. Where we got unexpected results, say, ones that contradict common sense. Vladislav’s web analytics talks usually go deeper, I think.
They say Maxim Faldin from Wikimart.ru, a cool modern internet company that is really developing the market, was very interesting. Unfortunately, I only made it to the Q&A, and yes, it was interesting.
Anton Terekhov took us so deep into the thickets of customer segmentation and behavioral marketing that I felt the touch of higher powers ;) Really, very cool stuff on customer LTV, databases and their metrics, plus an interesting case on emailing by the tour company TUI (I recommend googling it).
Nikolai Toverovsky from Artemy Gorbunov’s design bureau tried to teach people to think. The audience was skeptical ;) He recommended TRIZ, the Soviet theory of inventive problem solving, and its author Genrich Altshuller.
A pity I didn’t hear many of the talks; I’m hoping for videos. As usual, the most interesting talks are always scheduled at the same time. Parkinson’s law for conference-goers.
Organization. Top-notch. There was the expected hiccup with registration by QR codes (stop shoving them everywhere you possibly can!), but that’s a trifle. The buffet was tasty. I liked the long handles on the bags: easy to carry. Conference organizers, take note. Everything was great! Except maybe the interpreting of the English-language talks. It might have made sense to:
ask the audience whether interpreting is needed at all
as an option, interpret into headphones only for those who want it
hire a better interpreter girl (sorry). I understand the subject matter is tricky and a specialist is hard to find. But listening to the talk about Amazon was boring and a bit embarrassing; I fled after about 10 minutes.
Networking. The main thing is that I met Artur Orudzhaliev and asked a few questions of Yevgeny Shevchenko, both of whom I’ve long read and respected.
I met the folks from www.helena.ua. Judging by everything, they’re doing better than I am :))
At the usability section, Kirill Vinokurov from Netpeak ran a usability test on our online store, for which thanks to him and to the section’s organizers: I got a few ideas (pretty simple ones, yet still not implemented). And I even got a gift, the Eisenberg brothers’ Call to Action. Owox, thanks!
I got a few useful tips from Alexander Stelmakh of Amasty.com.
