WASP Market Research: Top 500 Online Retail Sites

My contribution to last week eMetrics Industry Insight was a short 10 minutes presentation based on WASP Market Research feature. I shared the results of two analysis I've done:

1. The web analytics tools used on a random sample of 120,000 websites visited by web analysts
2. An analysis of the Top 500 Internet Retail Sites in the US.

WASP - Web Analytics Solution Profiler Market Research

If you don't see the presentation below, you can get view it on SlideShare.

eMetrics Industry Insight (Washington D.C., 081020)

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own.

I have just done minor edits to comment some slides and the design was slightly altered by Slideshare.

The shakedown

Remember that was two days before the announcement of Google Analytics new features.

In my presentation, notice the strong shares of Google Analytics. On slide 10, it's even more interesting to note how often Google Analytics is along with another tool. If I'm Omniture or Coremetrics and I see a growing overlap with GA I would get worried. If I'm one of the 120 other players and Google Analytics is always there... I'm scared like a kid in a haunted house at Halloween!

If you look at the retail sites, 78% of them are already engaged in web analytics. I'm afraid the 22% who aren't will get hit much harder by the economical meldown (slide #8).

The brighter side

On the brighter side, slide #5 indicates "39% of unknown or none", a minor 1% improvement over the presentation I did at the previous eMetrics San Francisco in May (although not significant).

Slide #6 shows the concept of "multiplicity" proposed by Avinash Kaushik isn't quite there yet and there are lots of opportunities for market growth.

The shear reality of the economy

Based on numerous conversations I had at eMetrics, be it with market analysts, vendors or web analysts at companies or consulting agencies, I think we can expect the following:

• Vendors will see a major slowdown. Companies who are already engaged in web analytics probably won't deploy new solutions for a while. They will do with what they have. Those who aren't and really want to get in will jump on Google Analytics.
• Consulting agencies will see a slowdown and change in type of service they provide. Often overloaded, some slowdown might be welcome (but not too much!)... agencies will be solicited for shorter, narrower mandates.
• Web analysts at mature companies. If you are lucky enough to work for a company with a somewhat mature analytical culture, the long term objectives remain and budget shouldn't be slashed radically because the benefits are already proven. As we like to say, it's even more important to do web analytics when the economy goes crazy...
• Web analysts at early stage. If you haven't demonstrated good ROI and are still strugling with implementation, internal politics and such... good luck!
• Education and conferences... if your budget for education & conferences is not already slashed to nearly zero... expect it to be pretty soon!

What's your take? Any comments about the presentation or my views of the market are welcome!