Web analytics forecast for 2010

Enterprise customer intelligence firm, Webtrends, has come up with a set of key predictions for the web analytics industry in 2010:

Multivariate testing and site optimisation will become an imperative for online businesses and marketing departments of any reasonable size. Next generation solutions will focus on proven approaches, ease of use and will utilise expert services to enable the transition.
• 2010 will be the year that integration of online with other enterprise data will take off. Consumers are demanding that companies they engage with take into account their cross-channel behaviour during interaction and as we go into 2010, if consumers are not receiving this tailored, informed interaction, they will find a new company to buy from.
• Interactive marketing will continue to gain adoption in 2010, as email marketing, web analytics and traditional campaign management vendors race to become the owners of the ‘hub’ for interactive marketing, along with optimisation and analytics.
• 2010 will define the principals for social marketing and lay the foundation for the next decade of marketing. As people recognise that media is still media, and that social is about behaviour, the social behaviour theory will emerge. Social search will heat up among top search players, thus the nature of search engine optimisation (SEO) will give way to social search optimisation (SSO) and enterprise social platforms will take off.
• Mobile applications continued to grow throughout 2009 and will explode in 2010 and 2011. In 2010, Apple will continue to grow as their exclusivity with AT&T expires next year and Android will accelerate exponentially as more droid phones will be brought into the market and developers will surge at the openness of the platform. This will give way to application analytics that will be generate significant buzz within the web analytics industry.