Web Analytics in Europe 2010

I made a podcast about web analytics in Europe back in June 2007. I now figured it was about time to ask three experts about the progress made since then. After all, nearly three years have passed.

The experts whom I’ve interviewed this year:

• ¤ Dennis R. Mortensen. Entrepreneur, Author and Director of Data Insights at Yahoo!
• ¤ Steve Jackson, Author and Director of Business Insights, Kwantic
• ¤ Aurélie Pols, Senior Partner, Web Analytics Demystified

This time all interviews were carried out through the use of e-mail.

Do you think that the challenges businesses are facing have changed since 2007?

Steve: The speed of technological innovation has been and continues to be the biggest challenge in my view. Marketers were just getting their heads around email and search engine marketing. Now because of the way social platforms have matured for example digital marketers have to get ahead of another learning curve.

The paradigm has changed, businesses need to connect with consumers on their terms. Pushing offers no longer works the way it used to work. If a direct mail piece lands on your doormat or into your inbox while you may read it just like you did before you now have the ability in less time than it takes to make coffee to check out if your friends are recommending similar products/services from anywhere in the world. The speed of this change is what I see being the main challenge today, it’s taking a while for many marketers to catch up and learn about digital marketing in the 21st century.

Then comes the measurement promise related to digital. If you believe vendors it’s all 100% measurable. In theory it is but in practice it rarely works like that.
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