2007 Predictions: Web Analytics

VioletAndy Beal of the Marketing Pilgrim has tagged me for a new blog tagging meme that has just started. Andy was sweet enough to play when I tagged him for the personally tag game so it is only fair that we play along for his game!

The 2007 Predictions tag game was started by Mashable. I think it is more dangerous than the personal blog tag game because in this one you actually have to come up with something intelligent (and one's “performance” can be measured at the end of time!).

It took me six minutes to write this and I am sure it will have turned out to be a career limiting move! My 2007 predictions for our beloved Web Analytics universe:

  1. 2007 will be a banner year for Web Analytics education (books, blogs, seminars, conferences) and Web Analyst salary improvements (of course I have to say that!).

  2. We will see increasing sophistication of and availability of “free” web analytics tools in the market (welcome Microsoft Gatineau). This will be good for current vendors: more people to sell to and move up-market. This will be bad for current vendors: will have to create more obvious differentiators, than just number of reports.

  3. Pay Per Click (sometimes called SEM) analytics will continue to be important but cede mind-share and control to Search Engine Optimization analytics (which is in a rather sorry state in all current web analytics tools).

  4. WebTrends MarketingLab and Omniture’s Discover will release updated versions of their “data warehouses” that will be closer to (and hence more integrateable) standard business intelligence data warehouses (allowing us to do deeper and richer end-to-end analytics with other data in our companies).
    [Important: I have no knowledge of either company’s product road-map.]

  5. More Analysts and Web Decision Makers will realize the futility of torturing clickstream data to get into the heads of their visitors and embrace qualitative measurement options (surveys, testing, usability and so on). No totally radical changes but steady progress towards the Trinity mindset.


    One Bonus:

  6. More website business owners will realize there is this thing called Social Networks and panic when they can’t be measured. Rest assured, targeted solutions will follow in 2007.

In turn I’ll tag our esteemed world leader Mr. Peterson to offer up his top secret list of 2007 web analytics predictions (I am positive it will be super!).

Do you agree with the list above? Is it achievable? Is it too conservative? What trend does it ignore? Please share your own predictions via the comments field.

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Comments

  1. 4

    My prediction.

    Neil Mason will present his book:

    Taking e-business to the next step
    — A holistic approach to business insights

  2. 5
    F D Athow says

    Nice post, Avinash. However, just one small comment. "Analtyics" should be spelt "Analytics"

  3. 6

    F D Athow: Doh! Thanks for pointing out the error.

    Lars: That's a great prediction. Neil is so amazingly knowledgeable about our industry and he is such an effective communicator, I am positive that it will be a great book. Can't wait to read it.

    -Avinash.

  4. 7
    Rahul Deshmukh says

    Awesome stuff Avinash.

    Scalability and core integration of data will be critical for a successful 2007. Disparate data sources with a painful stiching process is taking more time than anticipated.

    Getting new vendors (free or paid) is a great step fwd, but I can see some consolidation in the tools area as well. We say VS and HBX combine in 2006 and customers are benefiting from this merger.

    Look fwd reading your new book.

  5. 8

    Avinash,
    1. How can we measure the hits for Ajax enabled website?
    2. One more thing, i have installed two tools hitbox HBX and Google analytics and the hits coming out from the two tools is different, the reason must be the way of collecting data by these tools. But is there any way for getting the exact number of clicks because analytics is a tag/cookies based approach and may be the end user directly type the new url into his/her browser or several other reasons so how we came to know that the clicks we are getting are the exact numbers?

  6. 9

    I listed your predictions for 2007 here:
    http://www.webanalysts.info/webanalytics/web-analytics-predictions-for-2007-and-2008/

    Are you commenting on the outcome?

    :)

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