Numerate Practitioners

There you are looking at how the company web site is doing. How is it affecting sales?
Is this the right question?
Is there an even more important question?
Perhaps it is worth looking at how you web site is building relationships and this probably means you need to analyse the effect of social media.

To do this, there is a need to use analytics and there is a useful report published by e-Consultancy today.

"The focus of this report is the UK Web Analytics market, including an analysis of market trends and challenges, as well as detailed coverage of the leading vendors.

E-consultancy: the UK market for web analytics will grow 22% in 2006 to an estimated value of £56 million.

"According to leading vendors, this year is already proving to be a strong year of growth following a similarly successful 2005 when we estimated the market value to have grown 25% year-on-year from £37 million to £46 million.

"Our valuations reflect the total UK revenues of web analytics vendors including income from software licences, hosted solutions and consultancy services.

"Trends within this market include:

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Continued investment in web analytics across a wide spectrum of sectors including retail, financial services, automotive, travel, media and gaming.

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Google’s free analytics tool gives impetus to market and shapes landscape as vendors differentiate themselves.

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Marketers embrace analytics ‘in year of the executive dashboard’.

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Analytics becomes key part of Business Intelligence as it ‘comes of age’.

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Lack of education and shortage of business analysts continues to hold back industry."

But it is no so difficult if you start with the free services such as Google Analytics or Sitemeter and work up from there.

More companies are realising (and, more importantly, acting upon the realisation) that they require a multi-channel overview and joined-up understanding of how their customers are interacting with them, whether on the telephone, in a shop or online. Gartner calls the emerging importance of cross-channel reporting and analysis the ‘third wave’ of web analytics.
As the report says: "

It is instructive to compare the size of this market compared to other online channels and sectors.

For comparison, E-consultancy has previously estimated that:

• Commissions and fees paid out to UK affiliate networks amounted to £83m in 2005.

• The market for online advertising networks in the UK was worth about £60m in 2005.

• The combined UK revenue for shopping comparison sites (focused on retail) was between £120m and £140m in 2005.

• The UK market for Search Engine Marketing will be worth an estimated £1.41 billion by the end of 2006. Paid Search alone will be worth £1.26 billion and Organic Search will be worth £147 million.

• The UK Site Search market was worth around £20 million in 2005, and will grow by 30% in 2006 to a value of around £26 million by the end of 2006.

• The UK market for Email Marketing Platforms and Services will grow 20% to an estimated value of £178 million by the end of this year (2006)."

Of course, as we all know, its not PR unless you can evaluate it.

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