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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Lars kindly asked me if I could use the WASP Market Research feature to analyze a sample of 400 Swedish websites. WASP is the Web Analytics Solution Profiler, a specialized Firefox extension aimed at web analytics professionals who want to do quality assurance and understand how their web analytics solution is implemented. The Market Research feature lets you scan several sites to uncover web analytics market share information.

Here’s the insight we uncovered:

• 71% of websites analyzed (282) are using a web analytics solution. This is similar to results found in other markets.
• 19% (77) websites uses more than one web analytics solution. When two or more tools are used, most of the time it’s Google Analytics.
• The most popular web analytics solution is Google Analytics (131 sites, 32.75% of all sites, or 46% of sites using at least one WA solution)
• If we include GA and Urchin: 77% of sites using a WA solution (218). This is similar to other analysis where Google dominates with about 80% market share of the web analytics space.
• Other leading web analytics solutions are: Nielsen (62), Omniture (39), WebTrends (17) and then a number of local and smaller players. (Note: Some people consider Nielsen to be more of an audience analysis tool than a true web analytics platform. In most cases were Nielsen was found, Google Analytics was also present).

While GA dominates, Gartner analyst Bill Gassman recently published an excellent paper covering the pros and cons of this solution as an enterprise-level web analytics platform. Among the difficulties mentioned, data collection & integration are lacking, and reporting, while sufficient for most, lacks advanced capabilities. Terms of service and privacy are also raising some concerns for enterprises. But the free solution is also a good choice when web analytics requirements aren’t too high. The availability of a strong user community (over 1M sites uses GA) and local consultants are helping and GA has quickly become a de facto choice for anyone doing lots of AdWords campaigns.

What also stems from this analysis, when mapped on the Web Analytics Maturity Model, is the relatively low web analytics maturity of the Sweden market. More advanced analytics such as voice of customer, behavioral targeting, multivariate testing and offline data integration remains an exception. As is the case in other markets, qualified & experienced resources are scarce and localized training & education are even more difficult to find.

The Web Analytics Maturity Model can be used to asses the current state of your web analytics practice, your strong and weak points based on six critical success factors, and identify the gap with the sophistication level you would like to achieve. Rather than trowing the towel because web analytics is too hard, organizations needs to set realistic objectives and gradually work to improve their web analytics. This topic will be presented at the Internet Marketing Conference in Vancouver, Canada, the eMetrics Marketing Optimization Summit in Washington and Infopresse in Montréal, Canada in the fall. Discussions are underway to present this topic at other conferences, including Europe.

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Stéphane Hamel helps businesses understand the value of online optimization. He has over twenty years of experience, and has been on both sides of the fence, including client and agency. Stéphane is an online tutor for the Award of Achievement in Web Analytics and Introduction to Business Analysis classes at the University of British Columbia. He is on the board of directors and treasurer of the Web Analytics Association. Read more about Stéphane.

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Yes, you heard me. WAW is coming back to Stockholm, May 21. It has been two years since I first acted catalyst for WAW in Sweden.

The May event is organized by Mattias Malmnäs, the new Swedish coordinator for WAA. I will be cheering him on as the Nordic coordinator for WAA. I’m trying my best to coordinate our efforts in Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Norway, and Iceland. Russia is also, for the time being, part of the Nordic organization.

Join us in Stockholm!

Not in Sweden? Do not worry, join one of the other events around the world.

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