Blackbeaks Blog….All things Analytics

This podcast which I’ve mentioned in previous posts raised the question What challenges do we see in europe regards web analytics?

At one point I said (and I quote) “The US is maybe 1-2 years ahead of europe, specifically in the Nordics”. I would like to re-open this discussion because I don’t feel it was clear what I meant. My Internet connection died at a critical point and I had to re-connect then Dennis had intervened and quite rightly said that there was no difference in competence between the US and Europe.

He is right of course when you’re talking about the people that know what web analytics is. The experts in Europe have been working with analytics for as long as the experts in the US give or take 6 months. However and this is what I meant…..

My argument revolves around 2 things I’ve recognized as challenges in Europe.

1. The general business public does not understand web analytics is. In many seminars I have been talking about very basic concepts that no-one got until I explained the entire thing very clearly – conversion rate for instance!
2. We see less investment in Web Analytics than in the USA.

The second point is important and one of the podcast panelists said that culturally Europe is less aggressive at selling which is probably the main reason we don’t see as many companies onto their third or fourth tool. However in my experience at seminars in the US and talking to more general businesses from the US I see much more understanding of the science.

Is it aggressive selling? Or is it better awareness? Can we avoid the same pitfalls as our US counterparts (buying 3 or 4 different tools) by learning from their errors?

Most companies I work for have very few if any people that know much about how to do a conversion assessment or pin point website problems with web analytics. A lot have marketing people that are used to getting reports out of a system about web traffic but that is about it. If the US is in the same position then how come I hear about lots of great case studies of online improvements via Marketingsherpa, Forrester, Jupiter, Neilsen from ordinary businesses proved with web analytics, and very little from Europe?

I think one of Europes biggest challenges right now is getting web analytics out to the masses. It’s why I am involved heavily with the WAA in Europe. I think that as consultants we’re bit of a bubble and we need to snap out of it and get back to real basics when discussing our industry to I would go as far as saying 90% of businesses in Europe who don’t yet get it.