• by Laurie Sullivan  @lauriesullivan, August 20, 2013

Marketers continue to struggle with mobile analytics. While many brands already have tools in place, only 46% of online professionals have implemented a complete solution, per Forrester Research.

Fragmentation creates challenges -- especially when it comes to mobile analytics, according to Forrester Research's Shopping Guide To Mobile Analytics. The report provides insight on the landscape and aims to help determine requirements for technology and vendor support.

Forrester analyst Julie Ask believes that mobile analytics often gets put on the back burner because many companies believe it only contributes less than 5% of sales unless they sell hotel rooms or tickets. "They spend less than 2% of their marketing and advertising budgets on mobile," she writes. "The perception that mobile has limited business impact ... causes ebusiness professionals to deprioritize mobile analytics."

In the report, Ask provides a matrix that describes how vendors like Adobe, ClickTale, comScore, Flurry, ForeSee, Google, IBM, Webtrends and others must connect analytics, metrics, content to insight and actions.

Only 58% of professionals surveyed identified key performance indicators (KPI) to measure their progress against objectives. Similar to online analytics, it will require one or more applications to track all metrics well. Ask explains that marketers must consider engagement, financial, mobile app and Web performance, benchmarking and qualitative metrics. Ironically, only 31% of financial services companies use financial KPIs, compared with 77% of retailers.