One of the most popular inquiries we have been receiving has been around the use of web analytics and how to justify new investment.  The interest has been driven by three factors – the acquisition of market leader Omniture by Adobe, the emergence of Google Analytics, and a renewed desire to reach consumers who have become increasingly comfortable in making buying decisions on the web.

While it wasn't a surprise that Omniture was acquired after a being a voracious acquirer itself, many thought it would be one of the behemoths like IBM, Microsoft, or Oracle -  or even application vendor SAP looking to add to its retail/consumer portfolio.  In retrospect, Adobe, no small fish either, makes sense especially as the low end moves towards "free" services like Google.  Combined with its portfolio of development tools for rich media, Adobe can command the high end by solving the tricky nature of tracking usage of video or even PDF documents.  Adobe will be a valuable partner, especially if you are using heavy multi-media.

You may have noticed we put the free in quotes when mentioning Google Analytics above.  Using the service is indeed free as long as you are willing to share information about your visitors and their activity with Google, something many large companies are leery about doing.  This reluctance on the part of large companies effectively divides the market between those that can't afford not to take advantage of the Google program and those that wish to exert more control.

The biggest issue is around deployment strategies and making the business case.  As to deployment, many companies we speak with use multiple tools – perhaps a region or a business unit or an acquired company is using something other than the corporate standard.  The question becomes, should the company undertake a rip a replace of those maverick deployments or can the systems, particularly the tags, be unified.  There are some options for normalizing tag definitions, most notably the universal tag from Tealium, but one must keep in mind that putting all of your tags through this analytic Esperanto will add performance overhead.  One must evaluate if the cost to offset the performance hit is greater than the cost of overhauling all of the sites to run on the same platform.  This decision can be further complicated when the company would like to extend the tracking to key partners such as when automotive companies want to collect information from dealer sites.

In order to assist clients in building a business case we have developed a maturity model that provides a roadmap for getting the most of a web analytics investment.  The business benefits are based, at the early stages, on cost reduction particularly on lowering the cost of managing content.  Maintenance costs per page average $265.  Having web analytics identify those pages that are underutilized can lighten the maintenance load.  The most prominent benefits come from improving conversion rates and delivering more revenue.  We have based this benefit on conversion rates at a certain stages of the sales process – earlier stages of the maturity assists conversions when the process is further along.   For example, reporting can help eliminate the drop rates that happen after the shopper is through 95% of the process. Table 1 details the stages and the benefits.

Table 1, Web Analytics Maturity

IDC Manufacturing Insights recommends that companies use the maturity model to assess their use of web analytics and to identify the potential benefits.  This process can be invaluable in marshalling executive support for new investment and setting a path toward integrating marketing programs across all sales channels.