Digital Marketing Blog

In the benchmark study about social media integration published last month, I highlighted how only 46.5% of the exhibitors at the Motorcycle Live show were using Google Analytics to monitor website performance and visitor behaviour.

Following-up on that finding, I’ve carried out some new research – this time looking specifically at the use of Google Analytics among the exhibitors at the tenth anniversary of The Outdoors Show, taking place over four days at London’s ExCeL in January.

The Outdoors Show attracts over 40,000 visitors each year and is the premier exhibition for people interested in walking, climbing, bushcraft and adventure holidays. According to the event organisers, VOS Media, The Outdoors Show has an affluent, active audience (83% ABC1, 58:42 male/female, average age 38) with an average household income of £62k per year. The average spend at the show is in excess of £250 per visitor. In terms of the averages, this is a much more affluent and niche audience than at Motorcycle Live.

The benchmark study looked at the websites of 138 of the show’s exhibitors and investigated whether or not there was evidence of Google Analytics tracking code and/or the tracking code of another client-side web analytics solution.

As was the case with Motorcycle Live previously, the exhibitors range from big brand retailers to charities and independent holiday companies to specialist colleges.

Google Analytics Integration

The main findings of the research were as follows:

• 72.5% of the exhibitors have installed Google Analytics tracking

• 70% appear to be setup under a Google Analytics account unique to each exhibitor

• 30% appear to be part of an agency or parent company Google Analytics account

• 5% have also installed tracking code for another web analytics solution

• 27.5% do not have Google Analytics tracking installed

• 1.5% have installed tracking code for another web analytics solution on its own

So nearly three quarters of the sites visited are using Google Analytics, which is a much healthier proportion than in the Motorcycle Live study, but what are all the other organisations doing and why haven’t their web agencies helped them implement a web analytics solution? It might be that a few are relying on logfile analysis, but I doubt it.

The lack of web analytics is more than just a missed-trick: it’s as commercially-insane as not measuring profit and loss.

 
The 70/30 split between exhibitor-controlled and agency-controlled accounts can only be taken as an estimate (based on the Google Analytics profile ID contained in the tracking code on each site), but it highlights an issue that’s worth bearing in mind: If an analytics solution is completely under the control of a web agency, there’s the potential for losing access to historical data as and when an organisation moves to another provider in the future.

The British Mountaineering Council is among the 5% using a combination of web analytics solutions. Alex Messenger, the BMC’s website manager, explained why:

Visitors to the BMC site are after a wide range of information and products: insurance, membership, skills advice, mountaineering news and more. We use Google analytics to keep track of what people are reading, where they come from and how they navigate around the site. We also run ClickTale to measure the effectiveness of our banner adverts specifically for membership and insurance applications.

For another perspective I also talked to Jason Borthwick, of Norfolk-based marketing agency Earthly Ideas, about the value of Google Analytics to one of the Outdoors Show’s exhibitors and why he recommends it to all his clients:

At Earthly Ideas, we’ve been using Analytics for a few years now, using it as standard on all our clients websites. The big advantage is that you can get an overview very quickly, but if you need more specific information it’s all there.

We’ve completely redesigned www.TheCanoeMan.com and it’s been vital to understand how the site is being used. One of the most interesting tools is the In-Page Analytics, where you can see what has been clicked on a specific page. It’s a fantastic help for designing a site, as you can quickly see what grabs people’s attention and whether your site is laid out in a user friendly way. Our customers like the system as they can interrogate it easily, finding out whether their blogs, Facebook, Twitter and all the rest of social media are having a positive impact.

Traffic Sources information is great when deciding on where to advertise. It’s clear that Bing isn’t having any impact on Google’s dominance. Bing is a tiny percentage of referrals for all the sites we run, despite us filling out all the webmaster tool forms that Bing now offers. However Facebook is quickly rising up the rankings, especially where pro-active campaigns are being run. The Outdoors Show will be pleased to know the listings on their website lead to quite a number of referrals. No webstats service is perfect or 100% accurate, but Analytics is easy to use, reliable, detailed and free, which is a pretty good combination!

Objective Insight and Improved Performance

As with the social media integration research, this benchmark study will be repeated next year to give a measure of progress towards more universal adoption of web analytics.

It’s not just about installing some tracking code though of course. Being able to actually interpret web analytics data and make informed decisions about performance optimisation is essential.

With that in mind, until the end of February 2011 Heartwood Digital is offering a free web analytics consultation to every UK-based exhibitor at The Outdoors Show.