Evolution of Analytics in Digital Marketing
Companies spend millions annually on digital chaos via different web development initiatives, site maintenance and marketing for their brands online. Far too often, web analytics is regarded as an afterthought. Very few enterprises have a process in place for ensuring accurate web analytics data capture, or that consistent reporting and analysis occurs on a regular basis. Even fewer organizations are able to yield actionable results from their web analytics investment. There are many different tracking products that isolate a single campaign’s performance, but the only way to gauge return on investment (ROI) for digital chaos is through a properly implemented web analytics platform.
While everything that is there in chaos can be measured, not everything would actually need to be measured. In my view, to leverage maximum investment on web analytics organizations should first of all understand the following
1) Target audiences
2) High level site model
a. Content based sites
b. Marketing or Lead generation sites
c. Commerce sites
d. Self Service or support sites
3) KPI’s (Key Performance indicator) of the site
a. Growth
b. Loyalty
c. Engagement
d. Stickiness
Knowing and defining above will go a long way in taming Digital chaos. As an example for brand or marketing sites depending on target audiences some of the KPI’s will look like
Brand KPI’s- Engagement
- Time spent on site
- Percentage high, medium, and low time spent on site
- Page views per visit
- Loyalty (defined as returning to a site)
- Frequency of revisit
- Visits per visitor
- Percentage of high, medium, and low frequency visitors
- Length of active membership
- From registration database. Average length of membership
- Unaided or bookmarked visits
- Stickiness
- Ratio of single page visit to total visits for single page or set of pages
- Bounce Rate-1 – (Number of Single Page Visits / Total Number of Visits)
I mainly see 3 different phases of evolution of web Analytics in Digital space.
Period/Parameters | 1995-2000 | 2001-2003 | 2004-2007 |
| Name | Rapid Market Growth | Market consolidation and product standardization | Part of process ecosystem |
| Key Players | Web Trends, WebSideStory, | Core Metrics, Websidestory, Accrue | CoreMetrics, Omniture, Websidestory, Webtrends |
| Business Model | License based, Solution as service | Solution as service (Pay as you go), web logs | Service providers , Integration with other vertical systems like commerce platforms |
| Market Budget (MUSD) | 140-400 | 300-350 | >600 |
What i would like to see in Future Analytics-->
Only thing constant in Digital world is 'change' and inevitably web analytics will undergo major change as well in 3-5 years time from now. I would like to see next generation of Web analytics for what marketing gimmicks call today as Web 2.0.
Web 1.0 analytics:[Marketing campaign] —> [Landing page] —> [Path on site] —> [Checkout sequence] —> $
Web 2.0 Analytics:[Buzz] —> [Traffic broker: Google, Pricegrabber, etc.]—> [Site] —> $
for Analytics 2.01) Multi channel Analytics thro’ web, mobile, social networks, word of mouth.
2) Standardization of tracking parameters across RIA (Flash, Ajax, Sliverlight) and online media sites. Tracking of 3d graphics also something I would like to see improving.
3) In terms of pure numbers, I would like vendors to start giving numbers which state 5% of consumer reported errors reduced on site while 15% increase in customer engagement via analytics reporting output thro the ‘buzzes’.
Tell us how your clients are implementing Web analytics and introducing innovation in this field?
