Challenges for Web Analytics Vendors

Avinash Kaushik wrote an interesting blog post setting out what he thought the most important challenges to the web analytics vendors will be in the near future. For me they are:

1. Pagecentricity - the web page is dead how do we measure rich internet applications. Although I read recently that Omniture and Coremetrics seemed to started to address this issue already.

2. Web Analytics is not enough - vendors need to find a way of meaningfully integrating survey data into the analysis easily and cheaply.

3 ASP is not enough - there is demand out there to be able to merge javascript page tagging with log file analysis or allowing business to pay a one off software license rather than paying ASP.

4. Privacy - not on the radar for a lot of the vendors but there is a vocal chunk of people who are rightly or wrongly worried about their privacy and new and innovative ways to stay anonymous on the web. We should all be using first party cookies but we could even loose these and javascript tags . Maybe not tomorrow but surely in the near future. When that happens what do we do? Are we putting serious thought to alternative, and safe, ways to collect data?

Measuring RIA Success

Avinash Kaushik gave an interview to Wendi Malley with the WAA Research Committee back= in October on the use of web analytics to measure the effect of RIA on website success. See http://www.webanalyticsassociation.org/en/art/?133. The take home message for me is that the static web page is dead and if we want to measure rich media applications such as ajax or flash based shopping carts, product selectors, booking applications then we need to concentrate on measuring business events. Business events can be measured by placing javascript hooks into applications that log when key tasks have been completed by the users. Using the example of a RIA shopping cart these key business events would be things like submission of shipping details or sucessfully entering credit card payments. The web analytics vendors must be looking a this area but the mean time there may be the need for a lot of customer analysis.

Rich Internet Applications and Web Analytics

Take a look at this article from Christopher Parkin, Omniture Inc. which begins to wrestle with the difficult subject of measuring the contribution rich internet applications make to the performance of web sites against online business objectives.

"As companies strive to enhance and optimize the effectiveness of their online channel, more and more marketers and business leaders have embraced the growing trend of adding rich Internet applications (RIA) to their Web sites.

While the visual appeal of the site is undoubtedly improved with these enhancements, the bottom-line value cannot be determined unless companies know how to measure the ROI (return on investment) generated by these applications.

Applying Web analytics technology to RIA can provide insight into the trends and behaviors associated with the interactions of online visitors and can reveal answers to critical business questions such as: How did the application improve sales or conversion—or why didn’t it? What specific features contributed to that outcome?

RIA leverage advanced technologies to provide users a more “life-like” experience—usually involving technologies that dynamically alter the interface without having to refresh the browser. "

See the full article on rich internet applications here

The Death of the Web Page

Bryan Eisenberg annouces the death of the web page in this post. With the increasing use of web 2.0 or even web x.o, RIA technologies, widgets etc the web page and associated metrics are becoming increasingly irrelevent. Setting up a whole load of new challenges to the web analytics community.

The 2006 EMetrics Summit

Haven't had much time to post lately but for all of you, like me who couldn't afford to go to the Emetrics summit last October don't worry. You can view some of the keynote speakers here. I haven't completed all the sessions yet but there's some really good stuff here from the likes of Jim Sterne, Matt Belkin and Brett Crosby from Google Analytics.