Every year, there is a bit of a buzz about what people are able to predict, and, basically, how far short they fall of those predictions for the upcoming year. WickedSciences has some lofty goals for 2009, but, besides that, I’m sure there are some industry forces which are certainly moving in directions with some ability to forecast their moves.

Every year, there is a bit of a buzz about what people are able to predict, and, basically, how far short they fall of those predictions for the upcoming year. WickedSciences has some lofty goals for 2009, but, besides that, I’m sure there are some industry forces which are certainly moving in directions with some ability to forecast their moves. That said, here’s our response to Lars and Eric Peterson about requests for the future of our industry:

1. Web Analytics investment will grow by greater than expected numbers (which range from 10-14% depending on who you talk to or where you get your research). This will be, in large part, of their being integrated into distributed technologies used by small/medium businesses and being finally realized as part of a larger Business Intelligence process.
2. Small businesses (start-ups and latent ventures) will grow by 30% bringing the level of sophisticated optimization efforts into play as a result of their becoming full-time projects due to layoffs.
3. Small/Medium Businesses (those achieving less than $7.5 million in revenues and employing fewer than 30 people) will experience the most growth due to voids left by larger less-versatile companies forced to make resource cuts and budget reductions. Web Analytics/Business Intelligence will be a large part of their growth strategy and they will increase accountable spending by 30-35% and trim nearly all expense in ad placement on non-contextual networks.
4. Affordable usability testing will get its first major look by 1000’s of small and medium businesses, while large businesses will continue to pay >$30k to have their websites OVERtested to the point that none of the output is actionable.
5. Multivariate testing, a procedure which has been largely cost-prohibitive for any company outside the top 500, will become an agency tool of extreme value in 2009. This will be largely due to affordable conversion optimization tools being introduced into the market and performing on a par with the big dogs. (I know of 2 already which are about to make a stink….)
6. CPA affiliate networks are about to experience a major shift in methods. With Google trying to play catch-up in that space and on the heels of the legislation changes in New York, techtonics in the world of affiliate advertising is ripe for the juggling.  Toss into that some new methods and tools and mix it with growing awareness of benefits, and the whole landscape might be different by Memorial Day.
7. The ‘Engagement Discussion’ will take a new turn around St. Patrick’s Day when the growing number of qualified analysts finally decide to begin developing and reporting on sub-sets of the engagement KPI.  We’ve been working on a system specific to ecommerce. Other people we know are working on lead generation, engagement cycles, ad click and a whole host of other objectives models.
8. Website uptime and performance metrics will become a huge part of the ‘affordable’ ecosystem of products to produce analyst resources for data about websites. There’s plenty of reason to believe that the performance reports and monitoring are a neglected, and should be a priority focus, of web analytics efforts. This is especially true for eCommerce where every down minute is equal to some tangible revenue of expense and decline.
9. Data integration and visualization will remain a large part of the tasks associated with consulting work for those of us with skin in that game. However, a new leap for many of these agencies will be the need to begin full Business Intelligence integration.
10. Website personalization will stretch its abilities out to the tangents which surround the nucleus of the website. Many more companies will provide personalized offers on their landing pages as well as distribute that function out to their periphery to increase offers and buy-in throughout their entire microcosm.

These are the quickest 10 I could come up with. I don’t fancy myself much of a prognosticator as say, maybe just someone with an ear to the rail. Most of these are relatively conservative.

Happy New Year to everyone.  Let’s hope, if none of these come true, at the very least, 2009 brings peace. We could all use some of that right?

Read the original post:
10 Predictions: Marketing, Analytics & eCommerce for 2009

Popularity: 15% [?]

Social Bookmark this post: