| On 02.04.08, In Comparison, by Jean-Marc Vandenabeele |
It is actually difficult to have a good vision of Web Analytics situation in Europe and especially in Switzerland. This is probably because Switzerland is definitely not the most advanced country in web analytics and also because there is little literature about it on the web. Here is a small paper presenting the usage of web analytics in our country through a study of 70 Swiss companies. These companies are representative of the market in terms of size, activities and location.
How it has been conducted?
The study has been made by browsing their web sites and tracking the code of web analytics tools within the source of the web pages. Only the corporate sites —mainly the .com— have been taken into account but when interesting other web sites have been visited. Due to the process used for this investigation, having no “visible” web analytics tool on the site doesn’t mean there is no web analytics solution at all (home made solution or solution with code which can’t be identified) but according to the maturity of the market, we can assume, it is the case.
Here are the results
The repartition by sectors is as following
From Financial sector (Bank & Insurance) to International Organisations including Consumer Goods (Retail, Luxury), IT (Information & Technology), Telecom, Industrial, Basic Materials (Energy, Agribusiness) and Health Care (Chemistry & Pharmaceutical) the major sectors present in Switzerland are considered and representatives of the market.
Who is Using Web Analytics Solution?
First Observation, 41% of considered companies don’t have any web analytics solution in place.
If we look at sector by sector, no surprise to see that 100% of Telecommunications companies use a Web Analytics solution. An interesting fact to notice anyway: one of the major Telco providers in Switzerland (mobile and fix) don’t have WA on their corporate site but only on one of their secondary e-shop website. It seems to indicate that WA is only for marketing purposes for them.
The Industrial sector is also well advanced with more than 70% of implementation when the other sectors are around 50% of usage of metrics tools. Within these last sectors, only 33% of International Organisations and less than 40% in Information - Technology field use a tool.
Which Web Analytics Solutions Are Implemented?
Google Analytics is definitely Number One with 25% of market share. Then you have some major editors: WebTrends with 13%, HBX (Omniture-Visual Sciences) 7%. Xiti is a French editor largely used in France and shares an honest 7% of market at the same level than HBX. Finaly few others solutions like Coremetrics, Doubleclick, SiteStat or Wysistat are present but not significantly. This partition is really representative of the Switzerland (European?) market except maybe for the total absence of Omniture (even if they have gained market share with HBX).
Because some of the tools present in this study provide both ASP and software mode with significant differences (budget, data policies,…) it is interesting to see the repartition of companies using ASP mode versus those having implemented the software internally
6% of the companies using Google Analytics were in fact using Urchin and one of them have implemented both the Urchin tool and the ASP GA version.
WebTrends, HBX and Xiti have all three 20% of software implementation. This choice is often related to the size of the company (mainly worldwide) and a significant number of websites where the tool is implemented and therefore it is more interesting to buy the software licences and manage internally the software than having multitude of ASP licences that could rapidly be expensive on a group level and not always the best situation for data consolidation.
Which Tool for Which Sector?
Google Analytics is leading the market but what about the different sectors?
Telecom companies prefer Webtrends (75%) and HBX (25%), none of them use GA.
On the other hand, the Basic Material sector is dominated by GA with 50% and Webrends with 17%. Financial, Industrial and Consumer Goods are the sectors whith the highest diversity with Xiti (Financial & Consumer Goods) and Sitestat or HBX (Financial & Industrial) having between 15% and 20% of the market.
In conclusion, the Web Analytics in Switzerland can be better, almost half of the market doesn’t use any metrics tool.
If 100% of the Telecom companies have implemented a tool, the Financial and Information – Technology sectors and the International Organisations are far behind, probably due to the nature of their activities.
Even if Google Analytics is number 1, the choice of the tool vary a lot depending of the activity of the company and we can notice the small number of different editors and the total absence of Omniture plus a local particularity: the French tool Xiti.
The questions now are:
- how many of these companies are really doing web analytics and not only reporting?
- How many companies have put in place a Web Analytics strategy?
- How many of them have someone (not necessarily a dedicated team) to analyse their data and if so, how many take actions based on their analysis?
8 Responses
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I can not agree with you in 100% regarding some thoughts, but you got good point of view
I was checking out your blog, I found this post while looking for corporate investigations information. Then I came across this post Friday titled useful although there is a lot of different views out there. I have added you to my digg acct.
Thanks for reading
Comments are always welcome and especially if you disagree with me…
Hello, I will be other
so, please, don’t take my comment too serious. Did you study another country market as well?
do you think that just 70 companies can make statitically significant sample? Because if you sort them into 9 categories, there is less than 8 in one. Therefore I think that those ratios or percentages are almost irrelevant!
Or am I wrong?
But otherwise, I know there is a lot of work behind these graphs
And another problem is that you could not see log analyzers, so I think these are hidden in your None solution class.
Hello Pavel,
, and according to the interest this small study as generated, I have plan to conduct a biggest study this year with a more structured approach in the choice of the panel.
Thanks for reading and comment.
You might be right saying that 70 companies might be a small panel but not necessary irrelevant.
My first idea was to do the exercise for the 20 companies of the SWISS Index Market (SIM) as it is a trend actually (view the good job done by OX2 team on few European Index: http://webanalytics.wordpress.com/category/euro-wa-index/).
But starting my home work, I quickly realized that even if the exercise is not without interest, these companies are not necessary representative of the Swiss market.
I agree with you that only 70 companies might be a small panel but it is not necessary irrelevant. The companies I chosen are representative of the market in term of localization -don’t forget that Switzerland is a complicated market splitted in 3 main speaking areas (German, French & Italian) with each their culture and specificities- and in term of activity.
More, the results of this study seems to be in line with other studies and with the perception of the market the professionals have today.
But I agree that this can be improve but at least it is a start and it made people react
To answer your last 2 points:
No I haven’t done it for other countries but again, visit the WA European index serie on <a href=”http://webanalytics.wordpress.com/category/euro-wa-index/” rel=”nofollow”>OX2 weblog</a>, it’s a good start.
You’re right, I couldn’t see log analysers and as written in the “how it as been conducted” section, none solution class doesn’t mean there is no solution at all.
Thanks again for your comment, keep reading and disagree.