Based on your experience from consulting, have you noticed any major differences between how Europeans and Americans approach web analytics?

I don’t have any *paying* European clients, so I don’t really have any insight on this question. Not sure why this is, they simply don’t ask me for a quote I guess! I have advised many European folks on all kinds of database marketing / web analytics issues through the free Q & A service on my web site or as a result of them buying one of my books. For example, see: http://blog.jimnovo.com/2007/02/28/profiling-library-customers-newsletter-22007/

But to answer your question, perhaps the kind of work I enjoy and am willing to take on limits my market in Europe somewhat. Europe might be “different” than the US in that Europe is more focused on web analytics for web site conversion etc. at this point rather than as an integrated part of a customer marketing and management strategy. I have no evidence of this though, I’m just guessing. Maybe it’s simply too early in the analytical cycle for European companies to engage this kind of work.

In general, I don’t accept web analytics work without a strategic component to it. If you ask me to simply “analyze your web site” I’m not going to do that, it’s just not very interesting to me. And unlike when I started doing web analytics 10 years ago, there are now plenty of people out there who can “analyze your web site”, so this work will get done by somebody. When I was starting out, very few companies owned the analytical tools, so they used to send log files for analysis to me on CD-ROM’s!

Instead, I prefer web or customer analytics jobs that are part of a larger idea, some kind of overall business optimization, and with a company willing to implement based on the results. In other words, I prefer to optimize for customer value and / or the total business, not just a web site. If the business *is* the web site, that is fine, but if so I want to be optimizing the entire marketing system including e-mail, merchandising, advertising, etc. not just landing pages and site navigation. Otherwise, it’s really a waste of time, for both myself and the client. I think Europeans are at least interested in these larger ideas though, because …

What share of your readership is European?

About 1/4 of both the blog and the newsletter readership is European, 1/2 is US, another 1/4 is Asia / Other / Can’t tell. I’ve been doing the newsletter / web site since 2000, so the audience on the web site / newsletter is *much* larger than the blog, which started in 2007.

Jim Novo is an interactive customer retention, defection, and loyalty expert with nearly 20 years of experience. His professional career has been focused on introducing Data-Driven marketing to new industries. In the 80’s, cable television was the target and his ground-breaking High ROI customer retention programs were widely adopted throughout the industry. In the 90’s, Jim revolutionized the TV Shopping business by focusing resources on the customer instead of the products. Jim has a newsletter and a blog. He has written the books Drilling Down and Marketer’s Guide to E-Metrics. Jim is also Co-Chair of the Web Analytics Association’s Education Committee.

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