Web Analytics in Europe IX (Interview with Georges Anidjar, Unica)

Interview with Georges Anidjar, Director of Unica EMEA Internet Marketing.

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

Other than the increased sensitivity around data privacy issues, I don’t believe the market is too much different in Europe at all. In past years it used to be that practitioners in the US were more aggressive with their use of web analytics vs. Europeans and the rest of the world. But leading practitioners and consultants have since caught up. It still holds true for Europe and for any other continent that the majority of practitioners still leave a lot of money on the table by not following web analytics best practices (e.g. starting with KPIs, segmenting reports for critical customer groups, religiously doing A/B testing, etc.).

Is web analytics adoption more widespread in some European nations than others?

I don’t have numbers to support the thesis that adoption is stronger in one country in Europe vs. others. The British, French, Germans, Italians, Spanish and the folks in the Benelux seem to be leading the pack. These are the countries where we see the strongest demand for our commercial web analytics solutions, Unica’s Affinium NetInsight and NetTracker products. However, clearly, Web Analytics Wednesday in Stockholm are better attended than anywhere else throughout the world. Seems like 60 attendees every month! Go Sweden!

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

At the top of the list of challenges are those that apply everywhere, not just in Europe. The number one challenge is to turn the reports into action for improved results. Even the most intuitive and powerful Web analytics solution cannot do that for you by itself. Rather, those companies that set aside staff (even if only part time) to “give love and attention to metrics” as Avinash Kaushik once said, simply get a lot more out of web analytics vs. those that leave analytics as an afterthought. Once you spend the time you start asking a lot of questions of your web analytics data in order to research why visitors behave the way that they do. That is when you now run into limitations of the web analytics solution if it doesn’t support easy segmentation or if it requires custom coding JavaScript page tags whenever you have a new question to answer.

Georges Anidjar, located in Paris, is currently in charge of the Internet Marketing business for Unica in Europe. He has been in marketing since 1996 working for Teradata, operating the French subsidiary of Epiphany and launching the South Europe division of Omniture.

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