Publications

By Neil Mason, The ClickZ Network, Jan 22, 2008

... This week, I turn to Avinash Kaushik, a fellow Web Analytics Association (WAA) board director and a friend. Kaushik, an author, is a leading thinker about Web analytics and where it's heading, having actually "been there and done it" at Intuit. This is what he had to say.

Neil Mason: Avinash, you had a busy year in 2007. What were some highlights for you?

Avinash Kaushik: It has indeed been a hectic year, becoming an independent consultant and analytics evangelist role at Google and publishing "Web Analytics: An Hour A Day" in June. Along the way, speaking at conferences and running around the country became normal! Oh, then there's the blog, Occam's Razor -- my baby! -- that took more time than I could ever have imagined.

...

AK: I get the distinct feeling that we'll look back at 2007 and remember it as a turning point, a good one, for the industry.

NM: Why is that?

AK: Every site in the world seems to have Google Analytics -- a leading indicator that even the most common person with tangential interest in data now has access to a great Web analytics application. More interest translates into more mind share.

The industry has consolidated quite a bit. Omniture has built on top of its already impressive growth by acquiring Visual Science (/WebSideStory/HBX), in addition to Instadia (analytics and surveys), TouchClarity (behavior targeting), and Offermatica (multivariate testing). This year all roads seemed to lead to Salt Lake City!

WebTrends is going through some temporary management turmoil, but with its excellent set of solutions I expect them to come back strong.

There were more Web analytics consultancies launched, more than on you can count. Ditto for Web analytics conferences. Actually, a really interesting trend was how many non-analytics conferences had "Web analytics day" or "Web analytics pre-intensives" -- a real sign of growing demand.

It was also a year of Web analytics 2.0. An expansion of the core definition of what Web analytics is, stretching beyond just clickstream to include qualitative research, testing, competitive intelligence, multiple dimensions of outcomes, etcetera.

Read more.

See also part 2 of the interview with Avinash.