Shedding light on the Dark Art of web analytics at Xchange

The Xchange web analytics networking event in San Francisco this week brought leading users of web analytics together to exchange ideas and notes on all things web analytics. A common complaint from many ecommerce companies was a lack of broader understanding by executive management of what the ‘Dark Art’ is, and what it is capable of.

But there’s no doubt that this is set to change. Consumer behavior is changing to such an extent that traditional economic models are becoming less and less relevant.

As eyeballs switch away from the TV to viewing online, the drivers of the economy are also increasingly driven online. Broadcast advertising is a case in point – an industry in the midst of a massive transition.

What this means for ecommerce execs is that the ‘Black Art’ needs to grow up fast, and evolve from the realm of back office alchemy to a dependable science that can be trusted to run the business on.

The other big theme emerging from Xchange was an evolution from web measurement to optimization. While there are still many challenges remaining to consistent and accurate measurement, and this remains a pain point, the challenges are now largely not technical, but organizational.

Optimization of course is about making the ecommerce engine smarter than an analyst looking back at yesterdays visitor numbers and trying to glean insight. The goal is to embed analytics into robust and automated processes that make the experience better for the user, and drive higher conversion rates via the ecommerce channel.

Two big pieces of the optimization challenge are automation and integration with other systems to create cross channel /organizational actions. It’s clear that this revolution is just staring, but the demand to embed analytics into daily, automated operational processes is very real.

What is less clear is whether the existing industry will be able to gear up to their next frontier for web analytics industry or as was speculated by both industry analyst and founders of the analytics.