Web analytics is a very murky field. The competition is hard and there is no convincing solution which has proven beyond doubt to have all the answers (on a very high level that is). And the biggest bit of irony is that web analytics tools which charge customers see their biggest competition in a free tool, and one that can sustain itself to no end being free.
And that’s none other than Google Analytics. Though for most practical purposes Google is free to actually is a paid product if you cross over 50 million page views (or is it 5 million?).
Anyway, I just read an interesting bit of piece on Google analytics and where it is headed. Media post reportsthat “Google is working on a Google Analytics tool that would allow users to view on the dashboard the most important data first — not the top 10 keywords or pages on a Web site by column, but statistical data and conversational information alerting them to dropping conversions or declining sales.“
That is a very interesting point there, one that could be a godsend for thousands of marketers who grapple with numbers they don’t understand and charts that just look colorful. Here is a web product that will bring their attention to areas that need their immediate attention. While it does put a lot of questions to other analytics tools both paid and otherwise, it also sheds light on where traffic analysis as a niche is heading.
Imagine an intelligent tool that can suggest changes, offer alternatives, and draw attention to figures that marketers would otherwise overlook. Suddenly we are looking at a far optimized web and a richer user experience among other benefits.
Thinking ahead it can even integrate sentiment analysis, as tracking gets linked to search queries and their nature. Real time searches providing real time data getting updated on a real time dashboard are stuff geeky fairy tales are made of. And it provides a whole different perspective to the way Analytics is put to use these days. Above all its impact can be felt at manifold corners of an organization.
Right from the skill sets required in digital marketing, to tailoring offline marketing campaigns to suit the digital behaviour.
I am sure a lot of traffic analysis tools are already working towards such features. It would also be perhaps a point a tool like Twitter might consider having in its fold. However, Google seems perfectly placed to execute this the way it is supposed to be. If anyone needs the data to work with and experiment there is no one better that big G at the moment. And therefore these updates however small they might turn out, are still int he realms of epoch making in their own small way.
