2007 has been a fascinating year in the online space. In China, we saw the launch of a number of new Web 2.0 sites, such as 56.com or yobo.com, and witnessed how they are attracting new (large) audiences and changing the way users traditionally interact and behave online.
These new sites have also affected the way we must think about web analytics. Using web analytics to gather and analyse web traffic data on websites has been around for many years in the West but has very little usage in China. This article will explore the issues surrounding web analytics in China and explain why the tool is not being broadly adopted yet.
In trying to get a better understanding of why web analytics was not being used by a lot of websites, I set out to speak to the mid- and large-tier websites to get their perspective. In China, it was widely reported in the online press that there was no need for sophisticated tools and that Chinese website owners were simply behind the West in their thinking that Chinese advertisers/web publishers were not interested in measuring performance.
However, having spoken to a number of website owners and 4A advertising agencies, I just don't agree with this anymore. There was broad support and agreement that web analytics provided useful information; however, the tools did not exist in China to meet their specific needs. In fact, if there were Chinese-centric web analytics and measurement tools, there would be a broader adoption of these technologies by the websites (as long as the costs were not prohibitive).
Therefore, should a set of tools exist in China, developed specifically for this market, the adoption of these would be more commonplace. However, when considering the development of new tools for China, there must also be consideration of ways to measure both qualitative and quantitative information. Given the Chinese propensity to develop and use social networking sites, the new tools must include ways to examine user engagement patterns. In the U.S. and Europe, we have seen more traditional web analytics vendors provide tools to measure visitors (visits, page views, time on site etc). However, these tools will become more ineffective as Web 2.0 and Web 3.0 sites develop, causing the internet to become more engagement focused.
Chinese web publishers (particularly social networking sites) are being or will soon be having their advertisers wanting more detailed analysis of campaign effectiveness -- not just quantitative data such as page views and clicks -- but qualitative information such as customer engagement information. This will require publishers to have a better understanding of user behaviour and engagement patterns. It used be that page views and visitors would give us almost everything we needed to make ROI assessments but these measures cannot show a deepening relationship between the website and the visitors.
As the next generation of web analytics technologies are developed, Web Analytics 2.0 in China is set to leap directly to these new platforms and adopt web measurement tools that reflect the nature of the Chinese internet landscape. With technologies such as Silverlight, RSS and Ajax etc, Web Analytics 2.0 will address the fact that you cannot just look at the quantitative data alone. The user behaviour will increasingly contribute to the overall picture of a website's effectiveness.
Web analytics in 2008 will become more mainstream, individual, sophisticated and more integrated to ad serving and campaign management.
Until very recently, there has been little interest in web analytics in China. I think we will see this change in 2008 and web analytics will become standard. Finally, I believe that this move by a number of Chinese vendors to launch analytics platforms will spur other developments in three key ways:
- It will expose small and medium local sites to web analytics for the first time and encourage them to run their site in a more data driven way.
- It will inspire international analytics companies such as Omniture, Webtrends or Clicktracks to try and develop the Chinese market.
- Analytics 2.0 will suit more and more sites in China, and we will see more social networking Chinese sites move directly towards new analytics approaches rather than focus on visitor traffic, as with the more traditional measurement tools.
Mathew McDougall is group CEO of SinoTech. Read full bio.
