Guest writer: Hurol Inan, Bienalto

How do you think the market for web analytics in Australia differs from the rest of the world?

Australians tend to compare themselves to the US and UK. I believe we have fallen behind due to insufficient investment in the internet medium, and web analytics is directly affected from this. However, in recent months I am observing high levels of activity, regained optimism and momentum which may quickly turn things around.

On a scale from 1-10 when it comes to web analytics adoption, where would Australia fall?

I will answer this question in terms of:

• Tools: 8 - most have a tool of some sort
• Reporting: 5 - many report something but complain about suitability of reports
• Analysis and Interpretation: 3 - most struggle to interpret the analysis results and turn into actionable insights

What is the number one challenge for web analytics in Australia 2007?

The challenge differs by the level of adoption. In organisations, where the level of adoption is low, the challenge is to prove the value of Web Analytics to the management to secure funds and resources. In most cases these organisations are also doing not so well in the online platform. It would not be incorrect to claim if the organisation is not seeing the online as a strategic channel (if the management doesn’t get it), web analytics
enthusiasts in these organisations struggle a big time.

In organisations where the channel is strategic, web analysts are already gaining substantial benefits. Their challenges are twofold:

• 1) attracting the people with suitable skill mix and
• 2) involving traditional data analysts (who are tasked to analyse sales, campaigns, customers) be interested in the web data for a more integrated analytics initiative.

Why do you think SiteCensus is so popular in Australia?

SiteCensus (formerly RedSherrif) is the incumbent in Australia. It is a home grown solution that has been around for a long time.

The US vendors such as Omniture and WebSiteStory have only recently entered the Australian market within the last few years. WebTrends started up an office here in February 2007 (before they were represented by a distributor).

A couple of other factors that has played to the favour of SiteCensus are:

• 1) It has been marketed with a large organisation over the years and really well.
• 2) SiteCensus was often sold with NNR’s Market Intelligence solution which provides unique visitor numbers for a vertical industry by site and may contain demographic profiling information. Advertisers love this! When you bundle SiteCensus and Market Intelligence together, NNR’s offering is pretty unique.

However, NNR has not invested enough (or started investing late)in product development and has not trained their customers sufficiently on how to get the best out of their solutions. Hence they have started loosing ground to functionally richer US solutions in recent year or so.

For more insight into Web Analytics in Australia, read the results of Bienalto’s survey.

Hurol Inan is the Managing Director of Bienalto and is an internationally known consultant and author in online analytics and strategy.

Bienalto is a marketing consulting firm that assists organisations to focus on customers to achieve full potential of online marketing through data analytics.

Hurol publishes Attuned - a newsletter to share his views and resources on web analytics with others who are also passionate about getting the best out of the web through analytics.

Song: Men At Work - Down Under

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