What is the future of web analytics?
What does the future hold for web analytics, indeed? During my tenure at JupiterResearch I was more-or-less paid to predict the future, but at best I was right maybe 50% of the time. I think I predicted (correctly) that Google would give Urchin away, but I probably also predicted that Microsoft would acquire WebTrends (incorrectly) as a result. Such is life.
Fortunately I am smart enough to surround myself with really smart people, which is what I have done at the newest Web Analytics Demystified weblog: The Future of Web Analytics, Demystified.
What Joseph Carrabis (my partner) and I are doing at “The Future of” blog is creating an opportunity for some of the brightest voices in our community to wax philosophical about where we’re all going and what things will look like when we get there. In the last two months we’ve had excellent conversations started by the likes of Joseph Carrabis (NextStageEvolution), Rene Dechamps Otamendi (OX2), and most recently Mr. Ian Thomas of Microsoft fame.
The unique thing about this web analytics blog is that posts and comments are basically peer; we’re looking for long, well thought out comments that add something to the conversation. And as odd as it sounds we’re not approving navel gazing, fawning, and trackback/ping so that we can keep the conversation moving!
If you’re a long-time reader of my personal weblog I would strongly encourage you to subscribe to The Future of Web Analytics, Demystified. More importantly, if you’ve got a big brain and want to help us work collectively in an effort to figure the future out before we get there, we welcome your comments. Alternatively, if you have a prediction, see a problem, or want help resolving a problem that you struggle with, I’d love to hear from you about being an author in the Future Collective.
Web Analytics Bloglinks der Woche (KW 9 / 2008) | Web Analytics & SEO - News added the following ...
[…] What is the future of web analytics? (Eric T. Peterson) […]
Petri Mertanen added the following ...
I think that business intelligence it the right word for the future of any analytics. You can find one post from my blog last November. I don’t know which applications we’re using or whether we have to pay them or not, but I strongly believe that we’re facing situation where more integration work is needed. The ultimate goal would be one neat dashboard or interface where company’s strategical, financial, marketing, social media and web site data is in one place. If web analytics is the study of the behaviour of website visitors, business intelligence analytics could be study of the customers and other intrest groups interacting with the company as a whole.
eric added the following ...
Petri: Thanks for your comment! I encourage you to have a look at my post at The Future of blog regarding what we do today and business/customer intelligence in the future:
Thanks again!
Juan Damia added the following ...
Eric, good luck with “the future of”, I love the idea, it is great that you open the game for another people in your place ;-).
Regarding the future I analyzed the situation of the tools market and probably there is a fact that will change the Analytics tools market for ever, which is the competition among free tools (GA and MAA, former Gatineau). Take a look at my diagram http://www.analytics20.org/web-analytics/since-gatineau-nothing-will-be-ever-the-same/
Lars Ammitzboell added the following ...
For larger organisations, I expect that we will see greater involvement with web analytics, by Customer Analytics/Business Intelligence departments, as web analytics moves from reporting to data mining, scoring and aggregation of online and offline data.
In particular, there are three areas in which web analytics will add value in the next couple of years:
1. Web analytics integration with CRM
2. Multivariate testing and optimisation
3. Analytics driven Dynamic Content
The breakthrough has really been the data warehouse solutions provided by vendors such as Omniture, Webtrends, Unica, SAS. Although the first of these was launched a couple of years ago, it is only now that we are starting to see these being fully utilized by organisations.
Instead of just looking at summarized data, web analysts now have access to granular data that can be segmented, scored, or merged with offline data if ids exist.
Any Data Analyst would tell you that getting access to granular data is a key requirement for good analytics.
It is the granular data that has allowed a greater convergence with marketing. When you are able to identify and profile individual web behavior – anonymous or not – suddenly dynamic content and CRM become much more relevant.
You can store individual online scores in the data warehouse, and use this information for targeted campaigns (email, DM, newsletters, SMS, etc.).
Or you can present the visitor with dynamic content based on a database profile stored at a cookie level.
I expect that this will mean that many larger organisations will choose an in-house solution rather than on demand, but that will also involve significant hardware cost due to the massive amount of behavioral data. In fact, the key will be to decide which data to keep.
Patrick added the following ...
I’ve been hearing quite a bit about web analytics possibly merging with BI in the future.
What do you guys think this will mean for the skillset of a web analyst? Will web analysts have to add data warehouse and (technical) business intelligence skills (database stuff) to their skills, so they can provide the web data to other channels/fields (such as CRM).
Or do you think web analysts will actually have to use their web data to do data mining, predictive analytics, etc. with them for offline marketers?
I think the first option seems a bit more likely, because wouldn’t that be a bit much of work to do for one person? Doing web analytics and not just providing the data to offline marketing, but also analyzing and coming up with insights for them?
I can see business intelligence analysts adding (some)web analytics skills to their skillset of course (as their are probably a lot more business intelligence analysts than web analysts), but what will the job of somebody who’s doing web analytics look like in a couple years down the road if web analytics and BI merge? Will it still be mostly a web role (even if the web analyst will have to learn database & data ware house skills in order to help provide the data?
P.S.: Im not too knowledgeable when it comes databases, so hopefully my questions make any sense!
What is the future of web analytics? | Bienalto Blog added the following ...
[…] post is a response to “What is the future of web analytics?” by Eric T. […]
Greg Moore added the following ...
Nobody goes to the gas station and tells the guys they should do more than just finding the leaks in tires. Nobody says, Guys, you have to take action! The fact that people in web analytics keep saying we have to take action doesn’t indicate that we won’t take action. It indicates that for some reason we can’t.
Maybe 37% are returning visitors. Swell, let’s send them a special email. Oops. Don’t have their email address.
You want me to take action. I ask you to please focus instead on diagnosing the inadequacies of web analytics tools. In the near future, people who like web analytics may be using applications that enable them to take action. The beginnings of this can already be seen in applications like Eloqua, Marketbright and Marketo.