Research Results: Framework to Gaining a Competitive Advantage in Analytics

Last month, I mentioned some research that Stratigent has been conducting; a complete analysis of our findings is now available as a white paper, available by request here. However, I'd like to share some of the preliminary results. While some of the results were intuitive yet still very influential and important, I think you'll find a few results were less intuitive and very enlightening.

The Project

The goal of this particular project was to try to identify which resources and processes are required to create a world class web analytics organization. In order to gather information, we surveyed a broad range of web analytics practitioners as well as detailed interviews with a research panel. The organizations represented range in size from less than 5M page views/month to over 500M. Budgets also ranged from less than $10,000 to over $100,000/year.
 

The Findings

We found that a clear evolution of web analytics practices exists. Not very surprisingly companies start with basic web analytics programs and work up to higher and higher levels of sophistication. We have broken down the progress into four key stages: Basic Reporting, Advanced Reporting, Advanced Analysis, and Sustained Competitive Advantage and defined them in the chart below. While we noted predictable evolution, we did find that companies are able to reach the various points in the evolutionary scale using different paths.
 
Framework
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As noted above our goal of this research was to identify the means in which to reach a world class web analytics organization so we were particularly interested in how companies were able to propel themselves through the evolution and what characteristics seem to be absolutely necessary in moving through the stages.

In answering this question it became clear that proactive data analysis is a key defining attribute of any web analytics practice. Without proactive data analysis companies are simply not able to break out of the Advanced Reporting stage.

Another important attribute in moving an organization through the stages is education. Many companies found that once an investment in web analytics education was made, significant advancement occurred. 

As education is such an important factor it is not surprising that external expertise can significantly accelerate sophistication. External expertise is often able to offer a high degree of web analytics specific knowledge and experience which would be very timely to acquire in a single web analytics organization.

The next finding may be surprising on the surface: the size of web analytics staff does not correlate with sophistication. It appears that a larger staff may be driven by larger number of consumers of web analytics data and by large volumes of data. While it is our feeling that a large number of proactive data users may propel the organization forward, "report receivers" may actually hinder progress as opposed to help.

In conjunction with the last finding, it is intuitive that organizational logistics and/or legacy processes prevents development of sophistication. If staff is tied down in bureaucracy, they won't be able to proactively seek answers to key impacting questions.

A complete and thorough list of findings as well as additional information on the research conducted is available in the white paper. To receive a complimentary copy, simply contact us.
 
Josh Manion
Josh Manion
Chief Executive Officer
Stratigent, LLC

For more information please call 877-427-2900 or email info@stratigent.com.