Europe

This article, written by Neil Mason, was originally published on Clickz.com and is republished here with permission.

An interesting report was published recently by E-consultancy that gives a useful insight into the state of play of the web analytics industry here in the UK. They surveyed around 700 people from “practitioners”, agencies consultancies and vendors around a number of themes including the use of analytics within organisations, the amount of investment being made and the use that people are making of the data that has been invested in.

When asked how many web analytics tool they were using within their business over 50% of people said they were using two systems or more. Quite often the scenario was that a company was using a paid-for tool and then were using Google Analytics as well. Relatively few organisations were using Google Analytic exclusively. This is a trend that I have observed as well, an organisation has a system from one of the major vendors and then also deploys Google Analytics “to see what it is like” because it’s free. This result throws up some interesting questions like: “is this a good idea or not?”. One the one hand you can argue that since it’s not costing anything, then what’s the problem? Maybe Google Analytics does some things better than the system that you already have in place. On the other hand software like Google Analytics might be free to buy but it’s not free to implement (that takes time and effort) nor is it free to maintain (that takes time and effort too). Given that many organisations find it challenging to properly implement and configure one web analytics tool, does it make sense to try and manage two?

The other thing that struck me about this is that two systems will inevitably been giving different results. So which one do you believe? There’s a saying that a man with two watches can never tell the time. I can understand organisation wanting to try out different tools but at the end of the day I feel its best to stick with one and make sure that it’s giving you what you need.

There was some good news from this report about the adoption of other tools, particularly Voice of the Customer tools. Over 60% of organisations said that they looked at customer survey data. I think that if this survey had been done a couple of years ago the number would have been a lot lower. It’s good to see that businesses are beginning to realise that you can’t measure the effectiveness of the digital marketing strategy just by looking at data that comes out of a web analytics tools and that you need other data, particularly customer insight data to fully understand what is going on.

There are some worrying signs from the report. Organisations admit that they are still often not tying up their data collection strategy to their business objectives and relatively few said that they were definitely getting actionable insights from their web analytics. Quite a number thought that a lot of the data they had wasn’t particularly useful for decision making purposes and the clue to the reasons why came when you looked at the resourcing of their web analytics programme. 45% of respondents didn’t have a dedicated web analyst and when you look at where the money is being spent, the biggest chunk is usually on the technology rather than the resources to extract the value from the technology. So it’s hardly surprising that organisations are finding they are struggling to get insight from their web analytic programme that leads to better decision making.

The signs from the report suggest that there is progress being made in the UK but more vision is required at the right levels of organisations to tie their business strategy and the measurement strategy together. Reasons often cited as being a major barrier to having an effective online measurement strategy included lack of coordination, lack of senior level buy-in, budget and resources rather than problems with the technologies. And I think that if there is a difference between what is happening over here on this side of the Atlantic to what is happening in the US, it is probably more to do with those factors than anything else. For those of you in the UK and the rest of Europe, it’s worth taking a look at the report and seeing how you benchmark.

This post originally appeared on Applied Insights’ blog. Foviance acquired Applied Insights in November 2008, with Neil Mason joining us as Director of Analytical Consulting. As part of this acquisition, we’ve incorporated Applied Insights’ blog into our own.

The answer is probably yes. There, that was easy enough.

But then it gets a bit trickier, the questions start piling up. Like:

• What would a European WAA look like?
• How would it be organised?
• How would it work (or not) along side the existing WAA?
• What kind of legal status would it take?
• How would it be funded?

And probably a whole lot more that I haven’t thought of yet.

I have to declare an interest here. As a Board member on the Web Analytics Association, my responsibility is for “International”. I think last year was the first year that a Director on the Board had responsibility for “International”, though there has always been an International Committee ably co-chaired by Vicky Brock and Steve Jackson. Vicky, Steve and others have done a great job over the years helping to get activity happening at the local level in markets around the world. When I came onto the Board a year ago I agreed with Steve and Vicky that our priorities should be to continue to expand our international reach and also to look for ways to deliver more value to our international members.

A year on, have we done as much as we would have liked? Probably not. We are all volunteers, doing this is our own time. Most of us run our own businesses but I’m amazed at the amount of time that people do put in around the world on a volunteer basis.

Have we made any progress? Yes, we have. We have a new structure in place on the International Committee that should allow us to expand without losing focus and coordination. We have expanded into new markets by appointing country managers in places such as France, Spain, Russia, Argentina and Brazil. We are looking at how we can expand our activities into Asia. We are working on the structures and processes which will enable us to better help volunteer activity on the ground.

Could we be doing more? Absolutely. And it is a real case of “many hands making light work”. We need people to step up to the plate and get involved. I know it can be frustrating that sometimes we don’t seem to react in real time but as I said before that as a volunteer organisation it can take time to have the meetings, make the calls, to come to the decisions.

So back to the question? Does Europe need its own WAA? The answer is still “probably” but, the reality is that at this moment in time I don’t know. There is no doubt that International representation is getting stronger within the WAA. In 2006 there were no European Directors on the Board, in 2007 there were two. In 2008 hopefully more! As someone who spent many years working in the European divisions of US companies, I am well aware of the frustrations that can cause! I do think though that the WAA is becoming more internationally orientated and this debate about a European WAA is a great one to have. For me the next step is to work out how we get to the point of decision. There’s a lot of work to be done finding out what’s the best thing to do and how best to do it. We’ll be kicking that process off in San Francisco next week. After that I am sure we will be looking for all the help we can get! If you’re interested in helping out with the International activities and development of the WAA, let me know.