Thoughts from an analytical breakfast

This morning I attended 'An Industry in Transition - Web Analytics to Marketing Optimization' in Vancouver, Canada which was the first breakfast series put on by the Web Analytics Association (WAA) and eMetrics.



John Hossack of VKI Studios, a Google Analytics Authorized Consultant, who I previously met at Google's Headquarters in Mountain View, California presented a case study around the use of Google Analytics and Google Website Optimizer. It was great to see John's presentation and how they are using Google's products within the Canadian market place.

Jim Sterne was the keynote speaker at the event, Jim is heavily involved within the analytics industry and is currently the Chairman of the WAA. I was surprised by his presentation's content due to the lack of insights and depth. The event was described as "sharing insight into the level of expertise among practitioners today; challenges faced; opportunities available; and the role we play as companies adopt the continuous improvement method of marketing optimization", so I am quite disappointed.

Jim's presentation did provide a engaging walk through of the historical development of web analytics, but it seemed to be aimed at organizations that are just beginning to realize the potential of analytics as a business and marketing tool. This got me thinking about the maturity of the analytics industry in Australia and how it is still very new to a lot of Australian companies.

I created the following graphic by overlaying two graphs from Google Trends. It presents the search volume for the phrase "Google Analytics" within Australia compared to the global search volume. I believe this is a fairly accurate reflection of how much Australian companies need to catch up, it is fair to say Australia is 18 months behind in the adoption of analytics.

Search volume for "Google Analytics"
(The spike on the left reflect the initial release of Google Analytics.)

Labels: Google Analytics Authorized Consultant, Google Website Optimizer, web analytics association