The future of analytics
Posted Wednesday 20th January 2010 by Allison in Analytics.
Analytics has continued to grow substantially despite the recession, according to new information released by Econsultancy.
In the firm’s Web Analytics Buyers Guide and its Online Measurement and Strategy Report, it reports that the analytics market for 2009 was up by 9%, and is now worth £85m in comparison with £78m in 2008.
The report also unearthed some interesting findings about how analytics is being implemented on a macro scale in the UK, and how marketers are realising both the importance of analytics and how website data relates to profit.
It found that companies use analytics predominantly for both customer acquisition and retention, and 59% of respondents regarded information relating to the cost of gaining a customer or lead as ‘high priority’.
One of the most interesting findings, and the best finding if you are a web analyst, was that spending on in-house web analytics staff grew by 6%, while at the same time spending on technology for web analytics fell by 7%. This means that UK companies are increasingly investing in internal analysts to interpret data, rather than in paid-for analytics technology.
Econsultancy said this is a positive development as it shows the industry is realising that it’s the interpretation of the data, rather than the data itself, which is important in driving a business forward.
However, the report also found that 46% of the companies surveyed did not yet have a dedicated analyst, so this is likely an area of impending change and growth.
What does the future hold for analytics?
So what else does the report tell us about the future of analytics? Well, as mentioned above, spending on paid-for analytics packages has declined, so this could mean paid-for providers begin to struggle, in which case it’s possible there could be further consolidation following Adobe’s Ominture takeover, which Econsultancy estimated currently holds 42% of the paid-for analytics market share.
It does of course mean that Google Analytics will continue to gain market share, as marketers look to spend more on data interpretation and less on analytics software. But we will possibly see other paid-for analytics providers looking to diversify and carve niches where Google lacks them in order to compete.
An example of this is Google Analytics’ privacy terms and conditions. Many other providers offer some form of user personal information or form data capture, which is particularly useful to small businesses in which every lead counts, or even in large businesses which tailor their direct marketing to specific demographic user groups and define these groups using personal data.
Paid-for providers are already blurring web analytics definition boundaries with features such as email marketing campaign management modules and support for PPC campaign management.
Econsultancy also asked analytics companies to plot themselves and their company directions on a graph depicting which direction they felt their businesses were moving in. This tended to show many providers believing customisation to be the future of their progression, although neither Google Analytics or Coremetrics offered their position on this.
To summarise, we can expect to see more attention paid to data interpretation, with free analytics package Google Analytics continuing to dominate as companies look to spend less on software and more on interpretation, as well as diversification in the paid-for analytics packages market.
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