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Y! IndexTools...let the games begin

philkemelor@pkwc.com(Phil Kemelor) — Sun, 20 Apr 2008 23:19:00 -0400

The announcement to make Yahoo! IndexTools a free service, coming so quickly on the heels of the acquisition, would seem to serve notice to Omniture, Google Analytics, and other market leaders, such as Nedstat, Coremetrics', Unica, and WebTrends' about the seriousness of Yahoo!'s intentions.

Eric Peterson has written a very thoughtful post that delves into the market implications on this latest move.

But from a customer perspective, this could become a bit confusing in the short term. According to IndexTool's Dennis Mortensen, current customers were contacted to let them know they'd be able to continue using the service at no cost if they sign forthcoming agreement from Yahoo!. Details about the agreement and how this impacts current customization projects is still being sorted out, as is how long customers will have to determine if they want to accept the terms.

I'm sure most customers will be inclined to sign the agreement to maintain continuity, unless they have concerns about Yahoo! storing their data, as Google stores Google Analytics data.

Is this a founded concern?

It all depends on your privacy policies -- something you should consider in your requirements for a web analytics tool to begin with. If you haven't figured this out, then you should.

My guess is that for most current IndexTools customers, this will not be a show stopper.

If it does present difficulties for your enterprise, now would be the time to review the vendor profiles in the Web Analytics Report.

In the meantime, current IndexTools customers will surely be asking some important questions, like whether all their current functionality will remain available for free, and if so, for how long. Will data from the pre-Yahoo! days still be available? For how long? How will this affect custom work that you're doing or planning have done by IndexTools, as well as whether there will be a new technical and professional service availability and cost structure? And what about new features and releases, such as Rubix; what will be the cost and support structure?

Yahoo! is moving quickly, and I expect that they will seek to address these issues. However, as a customer, you'll have to make sure that you get these and other questions answered completely before signing on the dotted line.

IndexTools and WAA Standards

philkemelor@pkwc.com(Phil Kemelor) — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 23:21:00 -0400

Given pervasive confusion around analytics terminology, I lauded the Web Analytics Association's August, 2007 announcement of Report Definition Standards, but was somewhat skeptical with regard to how vendors might use the cloak of compliance to make it harder for you to interpret their report definitions.

Fast forward to March 9, 2008, and IndexTools' COO Dennis Mortensen posted a refreshingly comprehensive, easy to understand, and transparent list of how the IndexTool's solution complies (or doesn't) with the standards.

Critically, Mortensen describes the methodology IndexTools uses to make the calculations, which lies at the crux of using the standards definitions to understand reports generated from any product.

Mortensen's post must also rank as an industry first for a vendor to actually go public that their product cannot produce every metric under the sun, making it far easier for you to potentially draw an "apples to apples" comparison and clearly see what you get, and what you don't, from a basic reporting perspective.

All of the other web analytics vendors...especially those with the largest customer bases, such as Omniture, Google Analytics, Nedstat, ClickTracks, Unica, Coremetrics' and WebTrends should step up and clarify in similar terms how they meet (or not) these standards.

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?

Omniture's SiteCatalyst 14 Catches Up

philkemelor@pkwc.com(Phil Kemelor) — Thu, 6 Mar 2008 00:07:00 -0500

Everybody loves a party, and Web Analytics vendor Omniture is no exception, using their annual summit to announce the release of SiteCatalyst 14 and a truckload of other news, including a partnership with Baidu and the roll out of the combined Touchclarity/Offermatica offering.

If you have SiteCatalyst, you probably are now just getting familiar with the new release. So, what do you think of it?

I received a briefing last week, and certainly the new Ajax interface jumped out as a big improvement...13.5 was getting tiresome to look at, especially when compared to Google Analytics, IndexTools, and Nedstat.

SiteCatalyst's new capabilities in video measurement are also worth delving into. Tagging video is generally labor intensive because tags must be set within the application. Omniture claims to enable a "one tag" fits-all approach for Flash and Flex, along with Windows Media Player, QuickTime, and RealPlayer, which appears to be similar to the approach taken by Google Analytics. And there are improvements to Excel reporting and Forum access that are also noteworthy. To see some video of the new reporting, check out Marshall Sponder's blog.

If you're an Omniture customer, you'd have to be pleased with this upgrade. If you're an HBX customer contemplating whether to stick with the plan to migrate to SiteCatalyst, this will also appear to be fairly compelling from a features perspective at first glance.

Nevertheless, I suggest you take a closer look at what's really important from a requirements perspective...Is video analytics really something critical for your business? Do you use Excel reporting? Could Google Analytics fulfill 90 percent of your requirements and then a video analytics company like Visible Measures fill the last 10 percent? These type of mix and match possibilities can make your head hurt, but finding the right combination of measurement tools is going to get more, not less challenging, in the years ahead.

Lessons Learned from Omniture's Earnings Call

philkemelor@pkwc.com(Phil Kemelor) — Sun, 17 Feb 2008 19:29:00 -0500

If your vendor is a public company, listening to the quarterly earnings calls are a great way to get some insight into what to expect from the vendor in the short and long term -- something you won't hear from your account manager.

Take the Omniture Q4 Earnings Call on February 8.

To the investor community, Omniture portrays itself, (rightly so, I think) as a marketing machine -- company that is poised to sell you on its growing product suite. Not just analytics, but behavioral targeting and search engine marketing management, as well as its Genesis integrations.

So what does it matter? If you own SiteCatalyst, you'll likely hear from your reps more frequently and probably meet some new ones, too. This could be a hassle.

Your approach may depend on the traction web analytics has in your organization. If analytics is still relegated to the gulag, then the idea of integrating analytics with third-party marketing data may seem like a remote concept. You need to do some serious evangelizing and business case development for the importance of analytics. Need help? Read Part 3 of the Web Analytics Report.

On the other hand, if your enterprise is ready to get to the "next level" in analytics, to have it help you drive decision support, you'll want to learn more about the web analytics' vendors ability to integrate with other data and systems.

This is the how web analytics can provide real business value for your enterprise. If you are selecting a vendor now, you should be looking at analytics as part of you online optimization strategy and broader vendor requirements. If you have a current installation, you should be conducting an audit to determine how best to integrate analytics with offline data and marketing programs.

While Omniture may get most of the press, they are not the only game in town. Also look at WebTrends, Unica, Coremetrics, ClickTracks, Fireclick, IndexTools and Nedstat. All offer adjacent tools or some level of partner integrations that are worth evaluating.

My advice: Listen and learn from the pitches. Separate the fact (that integrations take work), from fiction (integrations are never "plug and play"), then move your web analytics program to the next level.

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...

Where are the Profitable Web Analytics Vendors

philkemelor@pkwc.com(Phil Kemelor) — Tue, 9 Oct 2007 04:23:00 -0400

As part of my ongoing research for the Web Analytics Report, I've been looking more closely at vendor size and financial performance. Of course, most of the vendors in this space are privately held, so you have to take their pronouncements with a grain of salt.

The only web analytics vendors who claim to be profitable over the last 5 years based on net income are based in Europe. Those would be IndexTools and Nedstat.

Now, J.L. Halsey, the company that owns ClickTracks is also profitable, as is Unica, but in both cases their web analytics offerings are being supported financially by the companies' primary products, and bring in only a fraction of total revenue.

I find that typically, customers don't discuss financial stability and strength during the vendor selection process -- that would be distracting from the cool visualizations on the screen -- and perhaps a downer when you see the actual figures. But you ought to be aware of the potential risks of purchasing from companies that have never turned a profit. In the end, cash flow is probably a more important measure of near-term risk, but you'll still want to ask hard questions about your vendor's plans to get "in the black."

Introducing Coremetrics Jr

philkemelor@pkwc.com(Phil Kemelor) — Fri, 14 Sep 2007 09:27:00 -0400

Coremetrics' announcement of its SMB Solutions might have caught some by surprise, considering that this (hosted) Web Analytics solution is often thought of as one of the more complex and expensive web analytics options out there. However, the company says that roughly 35 percent of its clients are in the SMB market and they foresee plenty of growth in that area.

At one level, this makes sense for Coremetrics. As we noted in Web Analytics Report, Coremetrics' focus on specific verticals -- such as retail, finance, and travel -- makes for a more easily understood standard set of reports for novice or part-time analysts, such as web content managers and marketers. According to Coremetrics, 70 percent of their current SMB users fall into these categories.

From a business perspective, instead of competing primarily with Omniture, Coremetrics will now be competing with other mid-priced tools in the space, such as WebTrends, HBX, Fireclick, Nedstat, and IndexTools.

Let's look at it from a functional perspective. Specifically, will the SMB product carry a lighter feature set? The company says no, arguing that recent architectural re-factoring on the back-end of their service now allows them to compete on pricing and services in the SMB market. Prospective (and existing...) customers will want to monitor this carefully; going lower-market could mean many more customers working within a system that traditionally suffered from long waits for customized queries.

Coremetrics claims that moving significant amount of data processing away from their core database environment will address these bottlenecks. You'll want to test it.

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...

What's the difference between European and North American web analytics vendors?

philkemelor@pkwc.com(Phil Kemelor) — Fri, 4 May 2007 10:31:00 -0400

If you're a North America-based enterprise, would you consider a European web analytics vendor? If you're based in Europe, would you prefer to select a vendor from your country or region? I addressed these and other issues in a recent interview with Web Analysts Info a blog run by Lars Johannson, the Swedish coordinator for the Web Analytics Association. In general, US-based vendors -- such as Coremetrics, Fireclick, Omniture, Unica, and WebTrends -- today seem to focus more on integrating analytics data into broader internet marketing services. European vendors -- such as Nedstat -- appear more focused on core customer needs around support and usability, rather than sexy new features. Neither is better...but they are different.