Andrew Lucyszyn
Fresh off my correct prediction of the World Series winner (midway through the ninth inning of Game five) I can now confidently prognosticate the web analytics landscape for 2011! Always a mixed and murky discipline even at the best of times, on the one hand, life in web analytics could get marginally easier. No, really, it could. On the other hand, if the FTC’s 800-pound privacy gorilla starts bending the bars of its cage, it may be time to consider a new career in sand mandalas.
1. Social media listening platforms consolidate as web analytics providers move in.
With, at last count, 17,435 social listening platforms in use today, and more springing up all the time (17,436), a shake-up is inevitable, and the major players are going to begin devouring one another. For a company just now considering a tool or looking to make a change, the benefit will be that there is a one-stop shop for your social media needs – or at least the perception of it. For others, the change could be as small as opening our browsers to find the equivalent of “Alterian6, Powered by Cymfony.”
As with web analytics in previous years, the benefit of the thinning herd refines and combines tool sets to their optimal uses, separates the wheat from the chaff, and establishes price points with which most businesses are comfortable for the features they need. 17,437. Like Google Website Optimizer and Omniture Test and Target integrating testing capabilities into their core platforms, the same developments in social listening could transpire as elements of social media monitoring become tightly woven with web analytics.
Either through acquisition or through internal development, the Adobe/Omnitures and IBM/Coremetrics/Unicas of the world could well ramp up their social analytics capabilities, and attempt to press an advantage in the web analytics space. Then, if and when Google brings something new - and free - to the party, all bets are off. 17,438.
2. New trends in voice-of-customer solutions
Voice-of-customer data is a gold mine, of course, one of the pillars of effective web analytics, marketing, customer service and whatnot, and as such, it’s a pretty good idea to go get some.
Despite the love of VOC, it’s easy to feel nostalgic for when companies didn’t care what anyone thought. (I’ll make my lead-painted baby pacifiers with sharp jaggedy edges, and if you don’t like it, I dare you to mail me a stern letter. 17,439.) It’s simply difficult to have a run-of-the-mill day of Internet activities without getting blasted with “help make us better” survey invitations.
Companies by the boatload have done a wonderful job of embracing this methodology, and we’ll see some fresh approaches embracing unobtrusive, quick feedback nuggets that are short, task- or page-targeted, and highly actionable. The corresponding value will increase both for the consumer and the practitioner, because the piles of surveys that pop up each day from banks, healthcare providers, news sites, software vendors, energy companies, town and cities, retail sites, and everyone in between, are beginning to diminish in their utility.
3. Privacy smackdown from Washington.
Concerns over Internet privacy could take on Sarbanes Oxley levels of annoyance for Internet marketers of all stripes as the Federal Trade Commission discusses Do-Not-Track initiatives that could have wide-ranging effects.
No one yet seems entirely sure yet whether web analytics tools and solutions will get hit with the shrapnel as the FTC targets online advertising (http://bit.ly/gVQjRG), but the developments bear close watching.
Throw in the tangents of the WikiLeaks drama and continued haggling over privacy concerns at social networking websites, and the pressure to “do something” (about anything) will have implications for everyone large and small, from Adobe to Zappos.
4. iPhones and apps and Androids, oh my!
Content and commerce have never been this decentralized or this mobile, and both web analytics tools and thought leaders will be working overtime to incorporate the technology and its potential business implications into practice.
New and delightful revenue models that all seem to involve shooting birds at pigs-questions about proprietary software development and tracking, new profiles of new mobile customers (17,440), complications for revenue attribution- all stemming from a booming marketplace, will force not only adjustments in how data is reported but also the fundamental questions about how we want our products or content presented and sold.
5. The last holdouts came over to the dark side!
Finally, a trend that’s impossible to prove either way. 2011 will finally be the year that the last web analytics holdouts succumb. From the esoteric OEM widget manufacturers to the most intransigent Fortune 1000 corporation, every last holdout marketing manager or CMO in the world will look one last time at their report of their website’s top 10 pages, throw up their hands, and get in the game.
About the Author:
Andrew Lucyszyn is the Director of Web Analytics at SIGMA Marketing Group.
Interested in learning more about SIGMA’s web analytics offering? Subscribe to the Fifth Gear Analytics newsletter.
{ 0 comments… add one now }
{ 1 trackback }