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Top 10 Web Analytics Trends

By Jim Sterne

Internet marketing raconteur Jim Sterne is best known for top-flight eMetrics seminars that are held all over the world. He is the founding president and current chairman of the Web Analytics Association. Jim has also penned numerous bestselling books on Internet marketing, including his "Web Metrics: Proven Methods for Measuring Web Site Success". -Larry Chase

1. Upper Management Demands Proof

The go-go '90s and the slow-go dot-bomb years have created an offspring - something like a cross between let-a-thousand-flowers-bloom and show-me-the-money. Just because the latest is very, very cool and every teenager on the planet rolls their eyes when an adult says, "You can get Facebook on your phone?" does not mean that mobile social networking is worth betting the farm on - yet.

The first-mover advantage is giving way to cooler heads who want to be fast followers. Second Life? Absolutely - but not whole hog and not the whole marketing budget. Senior executives are slowly but surely coming out of their "I only understand broadcast" shells and they are learning that ROI can be measured better online. So now we have to offer proof that what we are doing online is paying off, and what we want to do will be dividend-producing and not just groundbreaking.

2. The Desire to Measure Everything Gets Serious

Upper management, having tasted from the Web analytics fruit of online marketing, wants the rest of the marketing department to toe the line and report value to the bottom line as well. The Association of National Advertisers reports at the time of writing that dissatisfaction with marketing ROI measurements is up 7%; suffering from a lack of marketing ROI definitions is up 20%; and poor internal response to marketing ROI data is up 16%. Direct marketers are laughing up their sleeves, delighted that broadcast is going to have to finally beg based on results instead of sex appeal.

3. The Need for Integrated Marketing Becomes Obvious

When one starts measuring multiple marketing methods, one starts noticing something interesting. The more cohesive the marketing message, the more return on the investment. When email, direct mail, newspaper ads, magazine ads, broadcast and outdoor all say the same thing, the marketplace absorbs the meaning. Communicating a common theme, position and offer has a serious impact on results. This realization is causing considerable organizational efforts to get everybody to sing off of the same page.

4. A Common Language Is Born

To the average business person - or even marketing person - Web analysts speak in a strange langue. A simple request for this week's "Hits Report" results in a ten minute lecture about servers, cache files and cookie deletion. To help alleviate the discord, the Web Analytics Association has published a tome of 26 Web marketing metrics. It's good to know the difference between visits, visitors and sessions and be able to point the rest of the team to the glossary. Now, when we're signing off the same sheet of music, we can sing the same words as well.

5. Defining Engagement Remains Elusive

The WAA has offered up a definition of "Visit Duration" (the length of time in a session)... but only the brave have ventured into the quagmire of attaching a definitive definition to "engagement". "Time-on-Site" is offered up by Internet metrics firms like Nielsen/NetRatings, but the debate will continue to swirl with talk of multi-browser-window surfing and multi-tab surfing.

As websites move away from serving pages of information - brochureware - and toward serving customers with applications and activities, then engagement will become a simple matter of recording how long and to what depth people participated in the discussion, configured the product or customized the site. Until then, I'll be happy when we at least learn to hum the same tune.

6. Reputation Management Grows in Stature

Those embroiled in the daily data diving of clickstreams and conversion rates have noticed that the Web 2.0 world we now inhabit is not just about on-the-page-AJAX events. It includes the interplay of outbound messaging with inbound ranting. Public opinion used to be that thing that market researchers went out and collected like bees collecting pollen - bringing it back to the hive to turn into honey to feed the Queen.

Today, it is all a matter of public record on an infinite field of blooming blogs. One only need look as far as the iPhone pricing debacle that made Steve Jobs back-pedal as fast as he could to see the power of vox populi digitas. The simple hiring of a clipping service has become the employment of an RSS-feed-eating psychoanalyst with her finger on the pulse of consumer tirades. The marketplace has indeed become a conversation. Listening has become an important part of measuring the success of a website.

7. Finding Experienced Web Analysts Continues to Mystify

Web servers have been serving commercial sites since the mid 1990s. Brave pioneers plumbed the depths of their log files, but it was several years before commercially viable tools for doing so were available. That means the single most experienced individual in the world has been doing Web analytics for little more than a dozen years. Your average Web analyst has only a few years under his or her belt - and that's with a specific company, in a specific industry. They are actively employed and actively recruited, with a lot more jobs going begging than analysts looking for work. Finding somebody to help you will be ever more time-consuming and costly.

8. The Web Analytics Consulting Market Mushrooms

That lack of potential employees has seen a gradual rise in an industry ancillary to the Web analytics tool vendors: Web analytics consultants. This gradual trend has seen a significant increase in the past two years, and the rate is climbing.

Web analytics consulting companies are growing as fast as they can find talented people with experience or just talented people with desire. Web development companies, search optimization companies and advertising agencies see a new niche of services to offer and are doing their best to fill the need.

9. New Web Analysts Flood the Market

Consulting companies are not the only ones to see an opportunity. Individuals are also attracted to this new arena. Those who taught themselves Web analysis quickly felt undervalued by the firms they were working for at the time. They have set out to offer their wisdom and experience to others as consultants. This is a chance to acquire a desired skill set and to pave the way to advancement.

10. The Industry Continues to Consolidate

Omniture, one of the top providers of Web analytics tools and services, recently announced that they are in the process of acquiring Offermatica, one of the top providers in multivariate testing. Web analytics companies have been buying up related technology firms right and left: email marketing and measurement companies, keyword search bidding companies, advertising optimization companies - they're all up for grabs. This is a trend that will not slow down.

But there's another side to it as well. We can expect to see Web analytics companies purchased by larger business intelligence firms and data warehouse organizations. This industry is a bustling sea of acquisition opportunities.

Bonus Trend. The Rich Get Richer

The Internet was to be the great leveler. When even the smallest company could create a website and sell their goods and services to the world, then they all had a chance against Big Business. It didn't work out that way.

The companies with the biggest budgets had the most clout. They could reach further, promote stronger and design and develop faster than two guys in a garage.

Today, even with every individual on the planet blogging their brains out, those with the most money to pay for the best tools and the most insightful analysts will win the day. This time, the battle isn't about who can buy the most Super Bowl minutes to blast their message to the world. This time, the winners will be the ones who know how to quickly collect, accurately cleanse and insightfully interpret the most data. These are the firms that are paying attention to what people do online, how they respond to offers and how they feel about the experience. This is a trend that is not going to go away.

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