This could be down to the increased availability of data, which makes it more difficult for businesses to effectively collect and analyse potentially disparate datasets.

Do you have a company-wide strategy that ties data collection and analysis to business objectives?

The sixth annual Online Measurement and Strategy Report contains a comprehensive analysis of issues affecting the web analytics industry and valuable insights into the use of analytics and business intelligence tools.

The 98-page report is based on a survey of almost 900 client-side and agency respondents within Econsultancy’s user base.

Actionable recommendations

But despite the fact that such a low proportion of companies have an overall business strategy for data analysis, almost nine out of 10 in-company respondents (86%) stated that web analytics did drive actionable recommendations that made a difference in their organisation at least some of the time.

Representing little change from last year’s results, only 14% stated that web analytics did not drive actionable recommendations. However it is less positive that those citing that web analytics definitely drove actionable recommendations have dropped in proportion, from 29% to 23%.

Do web analytics drive actionable recommendations that make a difference to your organisation?

Finally, companies were asked to state what percentage of the data they collect is actually useful to their organisation for driving decision-making.

Almost a third of companies (29%) stated that less than 25% of the data they collect is useful, while at the other end of the scale 12% of businesses believe that all the data they collect is useful for decision-making.

Approximately, what percentage of the web analytics data you collect is useful to your organisation for driving decision-making?