WASP: Germany's top 500 sites by OgilvyBrains

A nice survey conducted by OgilvyBrains, the strategic consultancy arm of the Ogilvy Group in Germany. Here's some interesting abstracts from their press release (original PR in German):

OgilvyBrains analyzed the websites of Germany’s 500 largest companies in terms of turnover and the top 50 national banks as to whether their website uses a tool-based web controlling program to analyze customers and visitors to the site. Over half of the companies surveyed did not have this facility. This means the company does not have access to detailed information about customer and visitor behavior on their site and, hence, cannot improve its performance and functionality accordingly.

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According to Bert Klingsporn, the WASP, the Web Analytics Solution Profiler, survey has one main conclusion: “The consumer’s heavy Internet use is not mirrored by adequate corporate web controlling in Germany. Often it is little things that stop potential customers completing their purchase. Recognizing and understanding these barriers and adapting the website accordingly can lead to billions in earnings potential.”

Even if we account for some margin of error in the way WASP for Market Research to its analysis, the percentage of web analytics adoption still appear to be lower in Germany than in some other countries. WASP won't detect purely server-based solutions, and it might have missed smaller, very localized players. However, we can safely state that less than 50% of the companies surveyed are empowered with analytics and taking fact based decisions based on their web users browsing behavior.