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Is the web analytics vendor feature race over?

philkemelor@pkwc.com(Phil Kemelor) — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 07:31:00 -0400

Press releases are a funny thing, I thought as I saw the announcement from JupiterResearch that the "majority of web analytics customers [are] content with service, forcing providers to compete with price and flexibility," and that "despite some small skirmishes over capabilities like video and audio measurement, the Web analytics feature race is largely over."

It's not as simple as that.

On one hand, as I noted when we released the Web Analytics Report 2008, the top 5 reasons that managers like their vendors has nothing to do with features...it's about service, value and relationships.

On the other hand, I wouldn't trivialize the importance of tracking audio and video -- two areas of content that are becoming increasingly important to all web content managers -- and have been historically difficult to track completely and easily, hence the rise of independent vendors.

Interestingly, the release mentions that "the new frontier for Web analytics is data integration and the ability to stitch together a holistic view of customers' experience across multiple touch points." Web Analytics Report readers know that we highlighted this trend in our first report in May, 2007. Perhaps it's semantics, but this certainly seems to be a feature issue.

In early June, I was on a panel on mobile analytics at the Internet Marketing Conference. Much of the conversation focus was about the tools...how did current online analytics tools compare to the new ones; what could be tracked; what couldn't be tracked; and so forth. As I've described in a few recent posts, mobile analytics is a new area for online analytics vendors, and this is certainly where we'll see a new round in the features race. The mobile web is too big to ignore.

Finally, software vendors must always evolve their tools to keep investor money flowing. Vendors must come up with twice/year releases to show the marketplace and investors that they are market leaders.

So, while I might be tempted to join in declaring the end of features -- if only so we can all focus on simply doing analytics more effectively -- I don't think it will happen.

And if you care deeply about measuring mobile and multimedia usage, well, then: long live the feature wars, because that's the only way you're going to get the functionality you need.

The challenge of mobile analytics - Part 1

philkemelor@pkwc.com(Phil Kemelor) — Thu, 29 May 2008 00:06:00 -0400

Last year everyone was talking about Web 2.0; this year it's all about the mobile web. Let's take a look at what this means for mobile analytics...which by the way, I'll be speaking about on a panel at the Internet Marketing Conference in New York on June 4.

The bottom line...mobile analytics is relatively new; beyond infancy, but certainly not for the faint of heart.

Biggest challenges are

Identifying unique visitors, because mobile browsers don't often accept cookies (you will likely need to rely on browser, OS and IP combinations)

Identifying the phone and manufacturer (you may need to integrate data from the Wireless Universal Resource File (WURFL)

IP addresses changing based on moving between mobile towers.

Vendors committed to JavaScript page tagging, such asCoremetrics and Omniture, are touting a "no JavaScript" image tag implementation strategy. However, these and other tag-based vendors rely on a JavaScript library file to collect data about the OS, size, and resolution of the monitor. To compensate, you need to stuff the image tag with query strings that will collect the data you require for reporting.

From the perspective of collecting browser (user agent) data, log file and packet sniffing still make sense because these are server-side methods, and therefore the http request gets logged. So AuriQ (packet sniffing), Unica and WebTrends are all possible alternatives, but still suffer the same issues with regard to unique visitor identification.

On the reporting side of things, vendors will point out that you can get the same reports as you'd get normally, which is true; you just have to filter accordingly to get a break out of mobile activity. Nedstat is an exception, recently announcing a more packaged treatment of their mobile analytics reports.

Reflecting the ongoing industry fragmentation within web analytics, a collection of new firms have emerged with a more specialized approach to analyzing the mobile web. I'll take a look at these companies in my next post.

Nobody's really number 1 in Web Analytics

philkemelor@pkwc.com(Phil Kemelor) — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 00:27:00 -0400

"Who's number 1?"

It's question people ask a lot in many domains, but especially software, and as such, it regularly pops up within the web analytics community.

You can rank them crudely by number of individual customers. Let's take a look at the vendors we reviewed in the most recent Web Analytics Report and see how many customers they have -- or rather, they say they have:

Google Analytics: ~~5 million~~ "hundreds of thousands" (Enterprise/SMB)
WebTrends: 10,000 (Enterprise/SMB)
ClickTracks: 8,000 (SMB)
Nedstat: 1,200 (Enterprise) 6,000 (SMB)
Omniture: 4,000 plus(includes Visual Sciences) (Enterprise/SMB)
IndexTools: 3,000 (Enterprise/SMB)
Unica: 500 (Enterprise), few thousand (SMB)
Coremetrics: 1,200 (Enterprise/SMB)
Fireclick, : 230 (Enterprise/SMB)
AuriQ: 200 (SMB/Enterprise)
Foviance: 50 (Enterprise)

It's an interesting list, but what does it really tell you? It tells me that some products target different sizes of customers and may be more niche than others. But can you really say who's number 1 or who's winning? I'd say these results only make for good conversation, just as picking who'll win the World Cup or this or that election.

Would you buy a solution because it's perceived to be the market leader? Because the buzz is that "everyone is buying" that solution? You shouldn't. I find that vendor selection is often given short shrift in today's market because of a perception that there are only a few real choices.That's simply not true. You have some very important choices.

Figure out your requirements and manage your vendor selection process. Don't simply favor one vendor over another because it's getting all of the good press clippings, and nods from the Wall St. analysts. In the long run, you'll be much happier with your analytics tool selection. Or, to put it another way, the "Number 1" vendor is always whichever one that's a right fit for you.

PS: Have you signed up for my web analytics class in Copenhagen?

The 2008 Web Analytics Report

tregli@cmswatch.com(Theresa Regli) — Tue, 15 Jan 2008 00:01:00 -0500

Today we released the 2008 Web Analytics Report, evaluating 15 web analytics products.

While you may have heard of Omniture and Google Analytics, and perhaps think them your only choices, don't believe the hype. As Phil Kemelor, lead analyst on the report, put it: "The web analytics marketplace has seen some instability and consolidation -- such as ClickTracks and SageMetrics being acquired by larger entities, and Omniture's imminent acquisition of Visual Sciences -- and this has led some to believe that web analytics has become a two-party system. But don't believe the hype that Google Analytics and Omniture are your only choices, because that's hardly the case."

In fact, our research found that there's especially diverse choices in Europe and the UK, and in this new edition we added one of those vendors, UK's Foviance and their tool WebAbacus, to our line-up of evaluations. As we also note in the full press release, with Microsoft entering this space later this year, the marketplace is far from limited.

You can download a free chapter, which includes our review of Coremetrics' Online Analytics.

If you are a full subscriber, you'll receive your copy shortly; if you're a previous report buyer, you'll receive an e-mail soon outlining discount eligibility.

Watch this space for more in the coming weeks...

Packet Sniffing for Web Analytics: Not dead yet

philkemelor@pkwc.com(Phil Kemelor) — Mon, 23 Jul 2007 00:30:00 -0400

You could be excused for thinking that packet sniffing-based data collection for Web Analytics was long gone. Packet sniffing -- or network-based data collection -- was the basis of web analytics pioneer Accrue Software's technology in the mid '90s, but like log file analysis, it fell out of favor at least in the US market with the advent of page tag-based data collection.

Proponents argue that packet sniffing is superior because data collection becomes "hands off" once the collection appliance is installed between the router and network switch. There are no tags to maintain, nor log files to administer. On the other hand, if a data collector fails, you have not data.

So, what if you want to consider using a packet sniffing solution? You won't find this data collection method available from major North American vendors anymore, but there are potential alternatives.

RTmetrics by AuriQ deployed their packet sniffing solution in 1996 and has established its presence in the Japanese market, among others. The company has headquarter offices both in Tokyo and Los Angeles. CCMedia, a Taiwanese company founded in 1999, is also committed to the packet sniffing technology, and recently opened a US office in San Jose. And finally, Metronome Labs, based in Pittsburgh, integrates its network data collection solution with the Webabacus Analytics solution sold by the UK's Foviance.

Web Analytics in Europe: Are the Yanks really coming?

philkemelor@pkwc.com(Phil Kemelor) — Mon, 9 Jul 2007 11:39:00 -0400

To set the stage, I commend you to a recent podcast featuring an interesting discussion about the European web analytics market, moderated by Lars Johansson, the Web Analytics Association Coordinator in Sweden.

The 75-minute discussion focused on current challenges facing European enterprises investing in analytics, the Omniture/Instadia acquisition, as well as the current status and potential future of European analytics vendors. The panel was comprised of an experienced and diverse set of web analytics veterans:

Steve Jackson, Satama, Finland
Dennis Mortensen, IndexTools, Hungary
Neil Mason, Applied Insights, UK
Oliver Schiffers, United Internet Media, Germany
Auralie Pols, OX2, Belgium
Marc Saarde, Creuna, Denmark

I found the discussion about web analytics vendors to be interesting in that there appears to be a sense of inevitability that the European market may come to be dominated by North American analytics vendors, or "the big four" as described by the panel: Omniture, Visual Sciences, Coremetrics, and WebTrends.

I'm not convinced that this scenario is inevitable. Here are 5 reasons why I think the "big four" won't be the only game in town -- in the North America, Asia, or Europe:

Analytics has plenty of room to grow in SMB market. This is true in the US, as well as Europe. Companies that address SMB needs through low cost, ease of use, and ease of implementation offerings will do well. Small companies are driven to use web analytics because they are already doing SEO and SEM which drives a clearer ROI for analytics based on web metrics. Companies such as ClickTracks, Google Analytics Nedstat all address these requirements.
Features and functions of SMB tools will progress to match the "big four." We've seen lower-cost tools evolve quickly in areas such as segmentation, and often surpassing the "big four" regarding visualization and user interface design. The major differences are found in integrating external data to the web analytics datastore, and integrating web analytics data with external partners. These gaps are likely to close over the next few years among some solutions.
Not all organizations need e-marketing platforms. As I wrote in the Web Analytics Report, web analytic vendors are transforming themselves into e-marketing companies through partnerships, acquisitions, and in-house R&D. But what if you're a customer that simply doesn't need this? For example, you manage an extranet or intranet portal, or are a government agency, non-profit, or content-oriented site. Vendors that focus on analytics, rather than revenues from marketing partnerships, will fulfill this market need.
Except for Google, all web analytics companies must be very cautious in their expansion efforts. Of the publicly-traded companies in web analytics, Digital River, owner of Fireclick, is the largest, booking $307 million in revenue for 2006. All the rest are, in the scheme of things, fairly small companies. And their profitability has not always matched the consistency of their phenomenal revenue growth, and as such, they are all potential acquisition targets. Over-extension could prove dangerous. Perhaps only those vendors that have been flying under the radar in Europe could stay out ahead...
Familiarity counts. Lars' panelists and I talk of the importance of support, and local presence in Europe. This will also likely be the scenario in Asia. AuriQ, a vendor we evaluated in the Web Analytics Report, has a strong presence in Japan. Other Asian firms are establishing their foothold in this fast growing market, such as CCMedia, which is based in Taipei and has presence in Seoul and Beijing, and Digital Forest, based in Tokyo.

How do you think the worldwide web analytics vendor marketplace will shape up over the next few years? Drop me a line at analytics@cmswatch.com. Also, if you'd like to share experiences about your web analytics vendor, I'd love to speak with you...