Econsultancy/Lynchpin recently released their annual Online Measurement and Strategy Report 2013, which had some great insights in.
While 56% of businesses rely exclusively on Google for web analytics, it was really interesting to see that from 2012 to 2013, a significant amount of businesses have outgrown GA, responding that it was not sophisticated enough for their requirements (17% in 2012 to 35% in 2013).
This is interesting because it would appear that the market is slowly maturing and some of the more “sophisticated” features that businesses are seeking are not available in GA, features that are either standard in other tools, or can be added to other tools.
One such really simple feature is the loading of other data to augment your current reports.
GA does a fine job of reporting web traffic, but when we want to add in things like customer demographics, 3rd party data sets, like Mosaic, or even multi-channel transactional data, GA can’t do it. Now, I admit, for the majority of companies using GA, adding that kind of information to your web analytics is probably beyond the scope of what your doing – but, its really nice to see that many companies are getting more advanced in their use of analytics.
And this is not about the tool itself – it’s about the way that businesses are now considering web analytics as part of an overall view of their customer. Adding in much more information and tying that information together gives you a far richer view of your customer and their behaviours.
Armed with that information, strategic and tactical decisions become easier to make because you’re more informed.
