In joining Adobe, I've just had to redo some HR related work suggesting that I will also act with integrity and not release trade secrets or intellectual property.
I think this a good thing, but I did wonder how it applies to what I know from being in the on and offline analytics industry for 10 years. I was also asked recently by a colleague whether I thought that online analytics had surpassed applications / methods used offline so I thought I'd use this blog to talk about novelty and the differences of the channels without giving away any trade secrets.
My answer was that although web analytics has developed considerably over the last few years, offline analytics has kept pace and there are still areas where its weak, I thought it might be worth discussing.
Data Collection: This is actually hard to compare. Web Analytics vendors strength is its ability to come up with new ideas about how to collect new data - facebook, set top boxes, mobile phones, twitter, search engines, games consoles etc. all these appear to be in the remit of the "web analytics" vendor that surely sets it aside from offline analytics. If you think that people aren't thinking of new ways to track transactions, phone calls, sewer systems (someones got to!) and various libraries of information held in digital channels from the more traditional vendors, you'd be highly mistaken.
Data volume: Are online analytics vendors storing things in advance unique ways? I don't know. I know that cloud computing is a big thing. I know that Google make use of it for their searches, how much they use in their analytics, I don't know but I'd love to find out. Do other vendors use similarly adventurous methods of managing data volumes? I don't know. I know that Omniture Insight (ex Visual Sciences) does some pretty cool things but is this more impressive that anything "offline"? Vendors for Telcos will pitch to record every single SMS, MMS and phone call interaction, a retailer will record every single transaction made at a point of sale, a bank has to record every time you add money to your account, do you not think that is impressive in terms accuracy as well as volume? I don't care if a hit from my site goes missing, but if that's my paycheck its a very different matter. Not only all that, the offline vendors invariably tie into the operational systems, whereas online, importing operational data appears still in its infancy. The "online" analytics that impress me are the huge retailers, Amazon, Ebay, Google's PPC, Gambling sites etc. I'd love to see how they manage things, and if we take data capture aside I suspect what they've built in house with the database vendors are in many ways far beyond anything a "web analytics" vendor offers.
Visual Insight: No. Web analytics data visualisation is not that special, it really isn't. Think about medical applications, pharmaceutical applications, networking applications, hell, think about excel... Yes, online has to handle the volume, but exceptional in its insight? I don't think so.
Trending Insight: Time series - do online vendors even offer time series reporting? Can you do anything more than simply smooth a graph? Can you predict future sales, page views click through etc? Can you do what if scenarios and see what effect campaigns are likely to have on your web performance? I think not, and I think offline has this.
Customer Segmentation: Do online vendors organise the data in terms of customers, then split the customers strategically to enable more effective marketing strategies? Nope. They don't. This is partly technological - still prefer to work with hits, then pages, then visits, then visitors, then users and finally customers but also cultural, a customer database isn't usually plugged into the online system, and besides web vendors prefer to collect data real time, rather than incorporating old data for analysis. Customer segmentation should lead directly to product development and marketing strategy - I don't often see web analytics currently driving this kind of thing hard within the organisations I meet unlike the offline companies I've worked with in the past.
Speed and Flexibility: The web has speed. Things happen fast from a consumer perspective. Stores can change their format overnight, Direct marketing that would have take weeks can be performed within hours, negative feedback can be immediate. Your weeks pay can be deposited in your bank and spent by you before you even leave the office. Admittedly products still have to wait while their are delivered rather than carried out of shop, but on the whole the experience is much more immediate, not only that new channels of information and interaction are cropping up everywhere. This means that marketing and the subsequent reaction to customer has to happen all the more quickly. How you do this and analyse it are actually no different to offline, but the speed introduces a number of other issues, namely that an organisation needs to be more structured, more organised, more focused on its USP and customer segments in order to provide clear messaging. The web has also always led in terms of automating solutions based on analytics when the data is available. (Collaborative filtering was perfect example of this, the likes of NetPerceptions leading before they dropped by the wayside). This is the key area where online is getting ahead of its offline partners.
Analytics: Offline have been producing predictive models that lead to insight, score potential customers, segment a customer base for years. Traditional, models and insight have been the domain of the analytics team. "Offline" software vendors are now realising that their applications must self learn or at least self maintain in order to keep the best figures in the systems. These models may combine propensity scores, risk mitigation strategies, product recommendations, contact strategies across multiple channels, tactical actions etc. Is online really any more complicated? No, I don't think - it has made the leap to automation quicker (think Omniture 1:1) but that doesn't always mean much as it cuts out the learnings to be had from a step by step analytics process. Oh and another thing, direct marketing was doing "MVT" 20 years ago, albeit with longer test cycles.
Market Research: Is tracking someone online as good as sitting down with them and asking to perform an action in front of you. I'm sure this has been documented elsewhere. On the web, if you can get enough users you can observe a multitude of behaviours and probably the ones you need to investigate. When analysing these behaviours online, do we really take the care and look at these things in a way more complicated that the better market researchers with their knowledge of sampling, customer segments, factor analysis? Again, the web has more data, but less quality of analysis, at the moment.
So on the whole, no I don't think that web analytics is better, I never have. Its strengths are 1) data collection 2) speed of interaction with customer 3) automation, but its lack of emphasis around the customer & product and the way these interact to produce coherent product and marketing strategies leads me to suggest there are still things to be learned.
One admirable thing is that the individual web vendors are trying to get good at all of the above, whereas I'm comparing them against the whole of business analytics vendors. That makes it a tough comparison as the hurdle to be climbed by the vendors is a lot higher, I just find it amazing that older lessons always seem to have to be re-learnt on the web.
As I hope above has shown, I think I can afford to keep blogging about process, strategy and analytics based on my years before Omniture and Adobe and still remain relevant without fearing that I will be stepping on any new intellectual property - I'll keep away from company secrets, I promise Mr HR person :-)
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