This is the third annual market research study to assess the uptake of web analytics by Australian business.
The survey results help us to understand the state of play in the web analytics industry, as well as to see where perceived challenges and issues prohibit or inhibit organisations’ adoption of web analytics.
Watch video message by Hurol Inan on the highlights of the findings
Maturation of the industry continues
Web analytics is a maturing discipline in Australia, with more organisations recognising the strategic importance of the online channel.
The 2008 survey shows that:
- Businesses are investing more heavily in web analytics tools, with the number of organisations investing more than $10,000 only in tools increasing from 36% in 2007 to 44% in 2008
- 62.5% of organisations use Google Analytics, up from 52.9% in 2007
- More organisations trust the data they get from web analytics tools
- More organisations are taking action based on web analytics reports and hence its perception as a strategic function has grown
- Marketing departments are getting more involved with web analytics and in growing proportions taking full responsibility for it.
- Web analytics has been identified as the most important web initiative for 2009 ahead of Search Engine Optimisation.
The main areas of focus for web analytics are on conversion analytics and online campaign analysis.
Some organisations are also pursuing more advanced initiatives such as setting up customer/brand engagement metrics, measuring the lifetime value of online customers, and implementation of analytics-driven targeted marketing initiatives.
Looking to the future
Site optimisation is the primary focus for 2009, which is critical for two reasons. First, a website is never static, and new features should be regularly introduced to grab the customers’ attention. Second, any business that executes online campaigns requires ongoing optimisation – with the pace of change online, what worked last month won’t work today.
Reporting and KPIs remain an ongoing challenge, and it’s clear that many organisations, particularly in the government sector, still struggle in this area. We need to see more thought-leadership around how KPIs and reporting can be used to assess the current level of performance, set direction and prompt actions.
In other areas, 2009 will be a strong year for web analytics as organisations explore more advanced tools and start putting more sophisticated techniques in place, such as user profiling and dynamic content.
Deeper insights
In this year’s survey report, we have segmented the results to see how specific groups (by industry, level of sophistication, etc.) compare to the overall results. Of particular interest is the extent to which they use web analytics tools for business gain.
The three types of segmentation we conducted are:
- Advanced web analytics users
- Government users
- Google Analytics users
For these analyses, plus Bienalto’s own insights into each section of the survey, please download the full survey report.
