It’s been an exciting year in the web analytics world. Let’s take a look back at some of the biggest stories of the year and what to expect in 2009! Rockey Nebhwani of Infosys Consulting writes an excellent post here, giving us a visual representation of some of the big stories in web analytics over the past year. Omniture dominated the headlines again this year with its announcement that it would be adding video tracking and social media tracking integration as part of its product offerings. 2008 saw more consolidation as Omniture acquired Mercado’s assets and launched Mercado Ignition in December 2008 while they also partnered with Lithium to integrate social media into their web analytics offering. Some good news for Yahoo! as they launched Yahoo! Web Analytics back after acquiring Index Tools earlier in the year. Let’s not forget Google adding advanced segmentation and some cool motion charts to its free service, Google Analytics.
The big story this year and most likely to continue through 2009 is mobile analytics. Omniture, CoreMetrics, WebTrends, and NedStat all announced mobile analytics will be added to their tracking capabilities in 2009. Some of the biggest retailers including Amazon, Sears, and Walmart took advantage of the growing m-commerce trend no doubt helping drive up their holiday shopping traffic numbers compared to other online retailers.
The other story to hit this year was social networking and how businesses can harness the power of social media to build their brand, create buzz, and drive traffic to generate sales. Zappos is using Twitter to build customer loyalty. Over 400 of its employees using the micro-blogging service including Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh. Radian6, Cymfony Orchestra, and SM2 all offer business intelligence on consumer-generated media (CGM) in a variety of dashboard metrics. Read more about how you can use analytics to measure your brand in the social media space with these services at Social Media Core.
Hi there!
You bet analytics were big in 2008, and I think especially in social media, they’re going to be big in 2009. Many companies are seeing the intrinsic value in social networking, but they’re unsure how to translate that into tangible metrics and results that drive their business. Thanks for the mention of Radian6, and look forward to hearing from you more this year on how the space evolves.
Best,
Amber Naslund
Director of Community | Radian6
@AmberCadabra