When the recent survey of 1,000 web analytics professionals found that over half of them, 56 percent, found their field hard to work with, you know we're a long way from taking full advantage of it. The survey called "Web Analytics Demystified," included a majority of respondents with a minimum of two years experience, and over 25 percent having five years experience.
As far as the relationship between the general company and web analytics, 82 percent of those responding said that for the most part it is not understood within their companies. And of those that did take a look at the data, a large number of them don't understand what it even means.
On the service they may not seem to mean much, but in reality it's a disaster. In general it's not connected to the technology itself, which has been around for awhile, but the disconnect between the attaining of data and communication and simplifying what it means.
Basically what the study concludes is most the data coming in isn't being understood by those interacting with it, so in essence, it's almost worthless.
This is a huge wakeup call to IT departments or those gathering the data to get down to the business of putting it into usable and understandable forms.
What does it say when those that over half of those in web analytics find it a very difficult field? If it's difficult for them, picture the difficulty for those trying to make sense of the significance of it.
The answer, according to Eric T. Peterson, who co-authored the report, is the need for well-defined processes.
He said, "Only 8 percent of companies worldwide are taking a process-oriented approach towards web analytics, but, in my experience, process is the key to both success and achieving positive and recurring return on investment from web analytics technology and staff."
Here's a great blog on Web Metrics to give a better handle on how to work with it.
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