Web Analytics in Europe, Part II (Guest Post by Lennart Svanberg)

Guest writer: Lennart Svanberg

A 10-year perspective

For those of you who have measured over the years – here’s a timeline:

1998-2000: Wow, we can measure the Internet!
2001-2003: We measured and and the results weren’t good.
2004-2006: Actually, when we look at our Internet figures, they’re steadily improving.

I did my first log file analysis in 1998. Today I work for a web analytics vendor, and in the meantime I’ve travelled around the world and produced Internet conferences in Europe and North America.

What we in 1998 didn’t understand from log file analysis was that analytics would go from being a reactive science (this is what happened on the site) into a proactive science (do like this and you’ll get the following results on your site).

Functions, design and content are what drives the web. Ten years ago a link was still a cool feature, today it’s 10 features such as videos, games, blogs, forums, RSS feeds, searches etc. that all need to be analyzed correctly and up to the minute. Log file analysis is long gone as an effective way of measuring your site and the only way of doing it correctly is to analyze each and every page, event and function using tagging.

Several web analytics vendors are doing their best to reach out to all corners of the web universe in 2007. Some web analytics vendors are partnering with search engines, content management systems, ad hosting systems, email marketing providers etc. in order to create an operating system for the web. Within a more and more complex website world, you’ll need to find a place where you feel in total control of your web development.

What is still the same as 10 years ago is the inability for our industry to find a standard for analysis that we all can agree on. This is sad and makes it possible for many companies to fool users as well as advertisers and the general public about successes and failures. A positive way of looking at the same issue is that because of a lack of standards, the entry barriers to the industry are still fairly low.

In the Swedish marketplace, where I’m active daily, I can see a lot of “non”-measuring or “wrong”-measuring still going on (inaccurate figures or unreliable figures). If you think positive, it doesn’t have to mean so much, but in reality, several companies are throwing money down the drain without realizing it.

It all looks bright and shiny for the year of 2007 within the Internet industry and measurement is a hot topic. Companies have realized, or are realizing, that there’s more money to make from increasing the conversion rate of existing visitors instead of focusing on getting new visitors. My only concern is that still a lot of the media is badly measured which leads to over-pricing for hyped media sites. That gives all of us in this industry a bad reputation.

Lennart Svanberg is a veteran Internet marketer who has produced numerous conferences on the topic. He is taking his Internet Marketing Conference to New York City and Stockholm this year.

Soundtrack: The Shins – New Slang
(selected by Lars)