Latest Gartner BI user survey shows Tableau as the clear leader in overall functionality and ease of use

We don't want to say we told you so but check out the below chart from Gartner's latest BI platform user survey: Tableau is the clear leader when it comes to overall product capability and ease of use! 

You might not be able to customise every little bit of your dashboard but data exploration with Tableau is just awesome! Just connect to any data source, Tableau finds the table joins automatically, drag and drop dimensions and measures onto your worksheet and let the tool suggest the best visualisation - analysts can finally focus on finding insights rather than getting stuck in technology.

Check out our latest Tableau data visualisations or contact us to find out how Tableau could boost your company's data mining and insights generation capabilities.

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StatCounter Australian benchmark data on browsers and mobile OS market share: iOS 74%, Android 13%

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Not sure if you've heard about StatCounter but if you are an Australian online marketer looking for local benchmarking data on any of the below metrics, I think you will like this post. StatCounter publishes local Australia data on: 

+ Browsers
+ Browser versions
+ Mobile browsers
+ Operating systems
+ Mobile operating systems
+ Search engines
+ Mobile search engines
+ Mobile vs. desktop
+ Social media

According to Wikipedia "StatCounter statistics are directly derived from hits (not unique visitors) from 3 million sites using StatCounter totalling more than 15 billion hits per month". Now, the Australian sample is not the biggest, but it's not the smallest either so good enough I think. And best of all, you cannot just export the graphs but also download the raw data!

Below are a few of the more interesting graphs on browsers and mobile operating systems in Australia compared to the global average. Australia is largely following the global browser trend with one key exception, Safari seems to be much stronger here than the global average, almost as strong as Chrome.

In terms of mobile operating systems the iOS that powers the iPhone is the clear leader in Australia with over 74% market share followed by Android with 13% which is much more balanced globally. Android has a lot more catching-up to do here and it looks like the iOS has stolen much more market share from Blackberry in Australia over the last few months than overseas.

How does the below data compare to your own website stats?

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ACMA Communications Report 2010 including data on Australian advertising expenditure by channel

ACMA just released another amazing report called the The Communications Report which is basically a collection of interesting telecommunication statistics from various sources. It includes some really interesting gems on Australian advertising expenditure by channel and the growing importance of online among less thrilling numbers on carrier licenses and emergency calls.

Download the full Communications Report form the ACMA website or check out some of the key advertising related charts below. As you can see online advertising expenditure has steadily increased over the past few years following a general usage trend and was actually the only channel with growth in 2009, however it still only reflects an average of 15% of overall advertising spend. Within online, search and directories are the key channels as one would expect but interestingly mobile reveals itself as somewhat hyped up given the the overall data download growth is still driven by fixed lines (mobile data download actually stagnated).

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RECMA data visualisation comparing media spend by country around the world including Australia

Ever wondered where Australia sits in terms of media spend globally? Well, have a look at the below map from RECMA that Nico just put me onto, it visualises the overall billings of the media agency industry in each country. 

Looks like we're still ahead of India and the Middle East and already behind Russia and China (but not by that much). Actually, I wonder how accurate the China figures are, they somehow seem low. 

Anyway, if you're interested in media statistics, you should check out the RECMA website, they have a lot of interesting global and domestic reports.

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Impact of website performance on overall conversion and cross browser/device display testing

We had a pretty interesting presentation from Gomez yesterday on the impact of site performance on overall conversion which is backed up by a Gartner report earlier in the year called E-Commerce Websites: Features That Make Consumers Buy.

Key findings of the Gartner report

  • Consumers expect to have detailed and accurate product information 
  • Consumer expectations demand good performance from retailer websites
  • The Akamai "7 Second Rule", page abandonment spikes after that
  • Consumers would like to see more single-page shopping carts
  • Consumers' product reviews are becoming a must-have element

According to the report page load speed is the 3rd most important influencing factor. "Historical Akamai research showed consumers abandoned pages if they took longer than seven seconds to load. Delay the presentation of the product information that the consumer is looking for, and you run the risk of losing not only the sale but your customer."

Apart from the performance testing features, we also really liked the cross browser testing and preview functionality as well which allows you to generate JPGs showing how your website looks across various browsers and operasting systems as well as mobile devices. Have a look at the below screen shots for the Datalicious blog to see how the site renders on an iPhone, iPad and Blackberry as well as load times across the various Posterous elements.

Download the full Gartner report on eCommerce Site Features That Make Consumers Buy.

(download)

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