Web Analytics Level of Advancement in the UK, Benelux and Scandinavia

This is the 2nd post in a series of posts about the factual (quantitative researched) state of the web analytics Industry. You can get an understanding of my methodology –by reading the 1st post: Web Analytics Industry – International Pulse (US vs. EU). Both this and the previous post are part of studies (play) done for my participation as an expert (look at me mom) :-) in the latest WAA (Web Analytics Association) webcast:


Taking the Pulse of International Web Analytics
Webcast: Taking the Pulse of International Web Analytics via WebEx
Slideshow: Taking the Pulse of International Web Analytics [1mb PDF]

Our panel of experts will consider the “international” challenges of web analytics today; how web analytics is being used by multi-language/multi-country sites; and we'll take the pulse of web analytics maturity in different regions.


I presented my previous studies on the US vs. EU – but posed a new question – and thus presented new conclusions.


Question:
How do the three supposedly most advanced regions of Europe compare in level of Web Analytics advancement?



Conclusion
Looking at the Advanced Report Requests usage in the UK, Benelux and Scandinavia compared to a global average – we see two distinct conclusions. That the Benelux region is the most advanced Web analytics regions in Europe (of the three analyzed) – but more excitingly, that the advancement of Web Analytics in the UK is not only below the global average, but also surprisingly below US levels!

Source: 5,509,003 reports requested by Web Analysts using IndexTools (Q1-Q3 2007)
(VisualRevenue.com/blog - Dennis R. Mortensen)

See my entire PowerPoint and accompanying slides:

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Web Analytics Industry – International Pulse (US vs. EU)

This is the 1st post in a series of posts about the factual (quantitative researched) state of the web analytics Industry. I also recommend reading the WAA (Web Analytics Association) sponsored qualitative study Global Use and Attitudes Towards Web Analytics - March 2007 by Eric Peterson as well. However; I will be able to answer different questions - simply from super crunching millions of factual report and analysis requests.

As I am participating and speaking in a WAA Webcast titled: “Taking the Pulse of International Web Analytics” (15th Nov. Signup online through WebEx) – I decided for a somewhat provocative (fun) question as the foundation and kickoff of this series of post about the factual state of the web analytics Industry AND as the use-case for my WAA presentation.


Question:
Are US Web Analysts more advanced in their use of Web Analytics than European Web Analysts?


- A “Web Analyst” is defined as an enterprise user who signs into the web analytics tool and request reports and analysis.
- “Advanced” is defined as in the web analysts use of a set of subjective chosen sophisticated reports versus a set of simpler reports

Coming back to the question. Most people would say yes, just because that is the way it is supposed to be, some would say, myself included, that there is no difference (and I have voiced that opinion many times before, based on my experience working with clients in both regions). Let’s have a look at the data:


Dataset:
Period: Q3 2007
Total Report requests: 1,911,913
Total Report requests by Enterprise users: 470,320

- I defined an “Enterprise user“ as users of the high-end (Enterprise) version of IndexTools and as one who built and/or requested a custom report in the session analyzed. Making sure that the results, we are going to look at, are not skewed by the regional distribution of advanced report users versus simpler report users.

Advanced/simple subset:

Total Report requests by Enterprise users: 470,320
Advanced Report requests by Enterprise users: 18,091 (3.85%)
Simple Report requests by Enterprise users: 15,864 (3.37%)

- I defined the “Advanced Report requests” segment as combined usage of the Pivot Table like Custom Report Wizard and the Visitor Segmentation reports
- I defined the “Simple Report requests” segment as combined usage of Most Requested Pages, Referring Domains, Visits and Traffic Summary

This is of course subjective, as I decided for the definition of what “advanced” is. However; I trust we agree that the two pools are quite different and that they indeed represent two levels of sophistication. The reasoning for leaving out the middle segment is that it can be debated, and quite fairly so, whether a scenario analysis or path analysis is advanced or not.

Now that we have the data needed for our question - all we need to do is; to segment the data on the two regions in question.


GEO segmented Advanced/simple subset:
Advanced Report requests by Enterprise users (Europe): 4.04%
Advanced Report requests by Enterprise users (US): 3.45%
Simple Report requests by Enterprise users (Europe): 3.30%
Simple Report requests by Enterprise users (US): 3.59%

- Understand that this is of course not a comparison between “Advanced” and “Simple” – that would not make sense.


Conclusion:
In contrary to what is commonly understood, European web analysts are on an average more advanced than US web analysts. This fact is based on two fundamental conclusions; namely that European Analysts are requesting and creating more Enterprise level reporting and analysis and working less with simpler reports.

Source: 1,911,913 reports requested by Web Analysts using IndexTools (Q3 2007)
(VisualRevenue.com/blog - Dennis R. Mortensen)

This is great fun and you should basically see the above as an appetizer for some of the conclusions that I will provide in this series... I must - of course - skip my trip to ad:tech New York in a couple of weeks, as I am most sure my US piers will hunt me down and force me to render null and void the post. :-)

Signup for the WAA Webcast and be entertained with the results for specific European countries as well, such as UK, Finland, Belgium and Italy – Why? Because that is where my fellow panellists (Steve Jackson, Michael Notte, Alessandro Zanzini and Vicky Brock) are from! :-)

Cheers