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Q. What excites you most about potential developments in web analytics into 

the future?

Avinash Kaushik, Google:

 The thing that excites me most is that no one has a clue 

where this is all headed. We have no idea what ‘web analytics’ will look like in five 

years. That is exciting because there is a ton of change and growth to come and being 

a part of helping play a small part in that change is simply fantastic.

There are new data collection methods to come, there are new ways of doing supe-

rior analysis of data, there is so much more we could do with Artificial Intelligence in 

optimising customer experiences, there are opportunities to bridge the various islands 

of data (on the web or outside) to create something amazing, there are . . .  it goes on 

and on.

They are going to get a lot better about what you should look at.

Visualisation is great and tables are good but what is killing Analysts right now 

is their ability to figure out, from megabytes and megabytes of data, what is actu-

ally worth looking at. Most tools still simply spew data out, relying on the Analyst 

(or the Data Consumer) to figure things out. That is a bad strategy, yet most tools 

follow it.

Visualisation has gotten a lot better – but I’m not seeing any form of intelligent rec-

ommendations – it’s very tricky and the web analytics companies are too busy copying 

other functionality! It’s good you mention that ClickTracks features, though.

Recently I talked about one specific example on my blog about how tools are get-

ting smarter, ‘Actionable Web Analytics: Focus on What’s Changed’.

Using ClickTracks as an example, I demonstrated how to look at only the data 

that has shifted in importance by a statistically significant amount. Your top twenty of 

anything never changes, but using this type of report, What’s Changed, you can look 

at just the data that really matters. Now it is easier to take action.

I expect all tools to get much, much better at applying advanced mathematics and 

statistics to help their users identify where to focus their attention.

The other thing I would highlight as an evolution for web analytics tools is that 

they are going to do a lot more than page view reporting on your site. I don’t mean 

doing clever things like Event Logging to measure Web 2.0 experiences, that is cool, of 

course. I am referring to their ability to measure content no matter how it is distributed 

(widgets, RSS, etc.) and where it is consumed (websites, feed readers, mobile phones, 

your home refrigerator or washing machine!).

Opportunity is, I suppose, what I find most exciting about the future of web 

analytics!

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