“Why do we need analytics? We already know that the Web site is bad!”

That’s a question we’ve heard a few times in response to a recommendation that Google Analytics be added pronto to a Web site due for a redesign. A design of any Web site—no matter how dated or clunky—is going to be disruptive to your loyal visitors. Here’s what reknowned content guru Gerry McGovern wrote last year about redesigns:

A website redesign approach is usually embraced by organizations who are reacting to the fact that their websites have fallen into disrepair...[A website redesign] approach is papering over the cracks. The cracks are a lack of resources to professionally manage the website on a day-to-day basis. The cracks are a lack of genuine customer focus, and a lack of continuous testing and evolution.

But if you’re committed to a redesign and don’t yet have analytics in place, adding analytics is a step toward focusing on the customer. No doubt the goal of the redesign is to deliver a more valuable experience for your site visitor. What’s valued now? What do you know to be of value on your site but isn’t being found? These are two of countless questions that analytics can answer as a basis for organizing the information on the new, improved site.

While in search for something else the other day, I came across Data Driven Design: Using Web Analytics to Improve Information Architectures, a 10-page document written by Andrea Wiggins, a Ph.D. student. Wiggins presents the scholarly argument for why we need analytics when approaching a redesign.

If you’re not familiar with the wealth of site visitor information available through analytics, your eyes are about to be opened, and I can say unequivocally that your approach to marketing will change for good. Let's go, let's add the analytics and start learning from your Web site user on-site behavior.

The CEO ranks second only to Marketing as an influencer on digital marketing strategy in financial services. That's according to the recently released Digital Marketing in Financial Services study produced by MarketBridge, a global professional services firm focused on sales and marketing effectiveness, and Source Media, which provides authoritative information, analysis and insight for the financial services, investment, insurance, accounting and related technology industries.

The survey was conducted in the third quarter of 2008. A total of 237 respondents representing a mix of executive management (38%), marketing (35%) and sales (17%) answered questions on digital marketing and budgeting; usage of digital marketing channels; analytics; resources; and attitudes and beliefs about digital marketing.

We’d encourage you to download the full study from but here are just a few additional highlights.

• 50% of respondents said they’re spending more on digital marketing in 2008 than in 2007, with 30% saying they were spending at least 20% more.
• Asked to rank the effectiveness of the various platforms, respondents ranked search engine marketing (SEM) and search engine optimization (SEO) toward the top and newer Web 2.0 tools such as viral video, social networks and blogs lower on the list.
• Respondents equally cited a lack of experience and the inability to prove ROI as their top concerns about adopting digital marketing
  tactics and programs. (This is in spite of the fact, the survey producers noted, that "ROI can be proved through the use of the majority of digital tools.") Regulatory issues were cited by more than one-third of the respondents.

SwanDog Strategic Marketing today published “The World Has Changed (Part 1),” a 12-page whitepaper available to be downloaded from www.swandog.com. Written by Dave Swanson, SwanDog’s founder and managing principal, the paper includes recommendations on how mutual fund companies, other investment managers and broker-dealers can reposition themselves in the wake of the financial markets crisis.

We have a close alliance (including maintaining office space where SwanDog does) so would have called your attention to the whitepaper regardless but as it happens every one of the recommendations implies a digital capability.

• #1: SwanDog calls on marketers to adopt a newsroom mentality—of course, the “news” will be delivered digitally.
• #2: SwanDog says it’s time for the manufacturers of investment products to start communicating again with investors—again, this is best done electronically.
• #3: SwanDog says traditional imagery and messaging need to be reworked. This is more easily and quickly done online—and more easily rotated as the markets eventually rebound.
• #4: SwanDog expects the traditional distribution approach to change, with financial advisors beginning to emphasize how they conduct their business as opposed to who their brokerage or clearing firm is. As advisors plan to step up their communicating, it will be online and it will be with the help of asset managers providing content electronically.
• #5: In commenting on the advantage enjoyed today by big brands, SwanDog says smaller firms’ survival will depend on their ability to demonstrate a competitive benefit. Again, we’d expect smaller, shallow-pocketed firms to focus most of their brand-building online.