Online Measurement/Strategy Report

A study of over 700 UK businesses has shown that over 80% do not tie online analytics to business strategy.

The report produced in partnership by E-consultancy and Lynchpin is the first study into the UK analytics sector and will be produced annually. It is intended that this will benchmark the development of the embryonic analytics sector which did not exist four years ago and has been fuelled by the rapid growth of online marketing.

Today the large corporates are realising they have invested in a very large and very expensive white elephant. They do not have the people to use the tools they have invested in and newspaper job sections are full of adverts looking for analysts that do not exist or do not have the skills and experience needed to get the software working effectively and strategically.

Key findings:

82% of companies have not have a finalised internal strategy that ties data collection and analysis to business objectives. 56% say they are “working on this”, while a further 22% say that they don’t have such a strategy.

Only 25% say their web analytics “definitely” provide actionable insights.

58% say that half or less of their web analytics data is useful for driving decision-making.

38% say that 30% or less of their data is useful.

Spending on technology accounts for 45% of company spending on web analytics compared to 18% for consulting and services and a further 36% on internal staff.

88% say reporting traffic figures is an “important use” of web analytics.

70% say understanding customer behaviour is an important function of analytics.

41% see lack of budget and resources as a major barrier to an effective online measurement strategy.

43% of organisations do not have any dedicated web analysts.

21% of companies are spending at least £50,000 a year on analytics

31% spend less than £5,000 a year on web analytics.

68% have access to one or two analytics tools. Only 15% of organisations have used just one web analytics tool in the past five years. A fifth of companies have used at least four tools.

66% use the free Google Analytics tool, making it the most widely used web analytics tool.

Around a third of respondents indicated they are going to increase their web analytics budget in the next year. Around half said the budget would remain the same.

Beyond web analytics, customer survey information is the area where companies are most likely to be looking at data, with 62% of responding organisations already analysing this. A further 27% are planning to look at this.

55% say they tie in CRM / customer profiling information with web analytics.

Linus Gregoriadis, head of research at E-consultancy, said: “Our research shows that many organisations are under-investing in internal analytics staff and failing to implement a coherent measurement strategy which can help them turn their data into actionable next steps.”

Contact us to find out more about the recent report findings.

E-consultancy subscribers can download the report directly here