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Omniture's Q1 results -- forecasting the future of analytics?

philkemelor@pkwc.com(Phil Kemelor) — Thu, 15 May 2008 23:41:00 -0400

Omniture's Q1 2008 financial results were as rosy as ever, and after listening to a year's worth of earning's calls, the transcripts are almost interchangeable...higher revenues, higher profit margins, more sales reps, more upselling of Genesis partner services.

Omniture's product strategy is focused on providing options and services on integrating web data to both marketing and offline data, the logical next step for web analytics that we discussed in the first edition of the Web Analytics Report.

Yet, how much of the potential marketplace for analytics is actually going down the integration path? Is your organization doing this? Or, does integration simply mean linking web analytics with Google AdWords?

Omniture is a bellwether company in the web analytics industry, but one trying to execute on the promise of web analytics integration in order to sustain its growth. Other vendors are following the same strategy. This could well become the final frontier for traditional web analytics vendors.

In a market that is now 13 years old, web analytics is no longer in its infancy. It may in fact be plateauing in features that are of real importance. Now we'll see if customers can finally catch up and use the data to drive web value.

Coremetrics releases ad hoc analysis functionality

philkemelor@pkwc.com(Phil Kemelor) — Thu, 8 May 2008 06:14:00 -0400

The recently concluded eMetrics Summit was somewhat quiet on the vendor front except for the Coremetrics announcement of its Spring 2008 release featuring ad hoc query functionality in its new offering, "Explore."

This now gives Coremetrics a competitive offering to Omniture Discover and WebTrends Market Intelligence.

More advanced users of Coremetrics will likely be pleased. As Web Analytics Report readers know, one of the major pain points among customers seeking deeper-dive analysis was needing to go through account managers to run custom queries and potentially have to wait a long time to get results. If Explore works as billed, it will mitigate that problem.

I've always thought that Coremetrics did a decent job at creating out-of-the-box reports that address the needs of marketers and less sophisticated analysts. While they have lagged their competitors in offering a strong ad-hoc analysis tool, another way of looking at it could be that they have been tracking their customers learning curve more accurately...and now they believe there is enough analytics maturity among their client base to actually use a deeper analytics tool.

If this is the case, it represents a different approach than what has often characterized web analytics..."a build it and they will be sold" strategy that provides tools that are too sophisticated and challenging for the customer base to use effectively. As you review web analytics software -- as you would any technology -- make sure not to over-buy something you don't know how to use.

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.

Yahoo! steps into analytics with IndexTools acquisition

philkemelor@pkwc.com(Phil Kemelor) — Sun, 13 Apr 2008 10:06:00 -0400

This past week's announcement that Yahoo! purchased IndexTools puts a new spotlight on the web analytics marketplace.

Yahoo! is clearly looking to compete with Google, but the reasons for this particular acquisition remain less evident. On the one hand, Yahoo! may be assuming that the mass market wants the kind of richer features that IndexTools offers. As you raise your own level of analytics competence, you may prove them right. On the other hand, since there were only a handful of independent, mid-range analytics vendors available out there for a decent price, IndexTools may have come to Yahoo! via more of a process of elimination.

The Yahoo! "party line" is that the technology will be a great boon to its small and mid-sized business (SMB) clientele. Probably true. In many ways, IndexTools resembles Google Analytics in its usable interface, featuring both dynamic drilldown and behavioral segmentation, as well as a nice collection of out-of-the-box reports oriented towards campaign analysis.

However, it is the perceived potential of IndexTools that has many observers hoping for more than just another Google Analytics. The company has been touting its next generation release, called "Rubix," since January. If Rubix lives up to its promise, it could possibly give Omniture's Discover offering a run in terms of functionality and ease of use. This has become the second-most anticipated non-release of a product in web analytics -- after Microsoft's Gatineau.

While Rubix could be a differentiator, without it, IndexTools does not offer the functionality that distinguishes it from Omniture and WebTrends -- for example the ability to analyze unaggregated data from a graphic UI and to perform repeatable Excel reporting. For now, you must use regular expressions to analyze unaggregated data and do manual updates of Excel...just like Google Analytics.

Dennis Mortenson, COO of IndexTools, claimed repeatedly that IndexTools could do 80 percent of what Omniture could do, at a fraction of the price. People also say the same about Google Analytics. This is marketing spin at its best. It doesn't matter which 80 percent or which 20 percent; it matters only how it matches your requirements.

As Web Analytics Report readers know, larger IndexTools customers picked that solution to get good standard reports, plus additional reports customized by the vendor, all at an attractive price. Feature richness and attention to individual customer service are not traditionally the hallmark of mass-market solutions, so Yahoo! has some clear choices ahead here, and IndexTools customers will want to watch carefully which way the new owner takes the service.

Among the questions that remain to be answered:. Will Rubix ever see the light of day? Will the basic technology be morphed to a Google Analytics-type solution? A combination of the two perhaps? Or will all of this become moot if Microsoft acquires Yahoo!? Or perhaps IndexTools becomes the premier analytics offering from Microsoft?

We'll be watching.

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.

Coremetrics Connect -- old wine in new bottle?

philkemelor@pkwc.com(Phil Kemelor) — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 23:18:00 -0500

Today's e-mail brought in a news release from Coremetrics' announcing Coremetrics Connect.

What's that you may ask? Sounds like Coremetrics' version of Omniture's Genesis, but also somewhat like the release of Coremetrics' 2008.

Of the 25 partners touted in the press release, it looks to me at first glance that all of the e-mail, search, SEO and e-commerce vendors represent long-time integration partners of Coremetrics. So, I guess I'm not sure what's so special right now except for the fact that they've rebranded the partner program.

Hmmm...kinda makes me wonder. Like I said in my last blog post, the concept of integration is a good thing, and you should start to embrace a holistic concept of data and analytics. But before you drink the wine, just know what you're getting into, and remain skeptical of vendor "plug and play" claims.

Well, I'll be delving into this more deeply going forward. And by all means, if you have any experiences to share, please drop me a line at: pkemelor@cmswatch.com. I'd love to hear your take on this.

Enterprise Search Vendor Landscape, Circa 2008

tregli@cmswatch.com(Theresa Regli and Adriaan Bloem) — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 00:16:00 -0500

You might be tempted to select enterprise search vendors for your shortlist based on their supposed "leadership" status in the market -- status either conferred by analyst firms or assumed by the vendors themselves. However, CMS Watch analyst Theresa Regli argues that you need to look more closely at product and vendor alike -- and understand where both are headed -- to properly evaluate your longterm risks and opportunities in an evolving marketplace...

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.

A New Day for WebTrends?

philkemelor@pkwc.com(Phil Kemelor) — Fri, 1 Feb 2008 00:14:00 -0500

Analytics vendor WebTrends announced a host of additions to their new management team on Wednesday.

But are they really new? It actually seems somewhat like a homecoming, as three of the four worked for WebTrends previously. This should assuage some customer concerns that a new team would be totally out of touch with the product, and interested only in prepping the company for sale.

The hope in Portland (where the company is headquartered) is that this new team can help WebTrends recapture market share that it's lost to Omniture and other competitors.

Currently, WebTrends is in a retrenching phase. The company says it's trying to improve ease of use in areas such as post-analysis translation, administration, reporting enhancements, data collection (especially in the areas of streaming video and audio), and admin rights (something we've talked about in the Web Analytics Report), among others.

From a customer perspective, I found this news to be somewhat heartening. The last few months have been anything but clear with regard to the company's direction. Now it appears that at least there's a team in place.

However, we run across many customers who have gripes with WebTrends, such as awkward Excel reporting, and a unique visitor counting method that bloats numbers. Will the company's soul searching lead to improvements in these, and other core functionality areas, or will the improvements be merely cosmetic?

Stay tuned.

What's an HBX Analytics Customer to do?

philkemelor@pkwc.com(Phil Kemelor) — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 00:04:00 -0500

Omniture completed its acquisition of Visual Sciences last week.

So where does that leave HBX customers?

For the party line, you can check out the HBX migration FAQ.

After reading through it, my guess is that you'll have a bunch of questions. As suggested on the site in a number of places, "contact your account or services manager." Well, here are some of the questions I'd ask if I were in your position:

When will our migration to Omniture be scheduled?
What is the process for mapping all of our HBX Analytics data collection to SiteCatalyst?
Are there any reports and data output from HBX Analytics that we are not going to get in SiteCatalyst?
Are there any reports we're getting in HBX Analytics that we'll have to work harder to get from SiteCatalyst? For example, are you going to have to recreate Report Builder Excel reports in Omniture Data Blocks?
If you own Visual HBX, the recently released transitional module between HBX Analytics and Visual Site, is that going to be supported?
Are you going to require professional services assistance to create any of the reports you previously had in HBX?

I suggest before scheduling your migration you get answers to all of your questions and instead of considering this migration as something you must do, think about it more critically, as if you were evaluating a new vendor. It may be a good time to dust off that old RFP and consider your analytics requirements. SiteCatalyst may still fit the bill -- just don't rush into this blindly.

As readers of Web Analytics Report know, you have options. I suggest you give Parts 3 and 5 in particular a good review.

I'd also suggest checking out a thought-provoking post on transitioning from HBX to SiteCatalyst by my colleague, Gary Angel.

What do web analytics mergers mean to you

philkemelor@pkwc.com(Phil Kemelor) — Wed, 16 Jan 2008 23:41:00 -0500

I wanted to provide a little more detail to the comments I made in the press release about the latest edition of the Web Analytics Report 2008 regarding mergers and acquisitions in the web analytics marketplace.

As a web analytics customer, the key issue is not so much that vendors have been acquiring other vendors. What really matters is whether you can get the service and support you need from your vendor that has been acquired. This will depend very much on the type of relationship you have with your vendor: if you work with a smaller vendor and are used to having access to the CEO, such as customers had at ClickTracks before it was acquired, things can change dramatically, as in no longer having the level of influence on future product releases. However, if you're mostly concerned with having someone answer the phone for a support call, an acquisition can help service and support. For example, some customers of Instadia have said they have received better support since the company was acquired by Omniture.

The point is, while acquisitions make a good media story, the real issue is whether your vendor can still meet your needs. To be sure, any change is unsettling, but in a sector like web analytics where ongoing service levels are a key determinant to your success, change can be good as well as bad.

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...

Omniture and Visual Sciences Get Nod from the FTC

philkemelor@pkwc.com(Phil Kemelor) — Thu, 6 Dec 2007 09:45:00 -0500

Omniture's plans to acquire Visual Sciences cleared a major hurdle yesterday with the US Federal Trade Commission yesterday. The acquisition, which is now expected to close in the first quarter of 2008, is subject to approval of stockholders of both companies and other customary closing conditions.

So, that takes out any suspense as to whether the deal would go through or not. Not that many folks expected a problem.

So, what to do if you're a Visual Sciences customer?

Omniture has said that it will likely keep Visual Site as a licensed, self-hosted product. The recently released on-demand may get discontinued and replaced by Omniture's Discover offering. HBX Analytics licensees will eventually get migrated to SiteCatalyst.

If you'd like to get a wide range of perspectives on how the merger will impact both Visual Sciences and Omniture customers, I invite you to join my Semphonic colleagues and myself for a free webinar on Tuesday, December 11 at 2pm EST/11am PST, where we'll be delving into the nitty gritty of the transaction.

To Register: Please visit https://www.gotomeeting.com/register/320201650 For more info: http://www.semphonic.com/analytics/asksem.asp

I hope you can join us!

Lyris HQ links ClickTracks, CMS, and E-mail marketing

philkemelor@pkwc.com(Phil Kemelor) — Wed, 28 Nov 2007 23:52:00 -0500

Lost in the news about the dust-up at WebTrends and aftershocks from the Omniture/Visual Sciences acquisition was the announcement that Lyris, Inc. (formerly J.L. Halsey), the parent company to ClickTracks, launched its Lyris "HQ" platform and BidHero, a PPC campaign management solution.

The core of the Lyris platform, according to the company, is in management of the various products -- ClickTracks, Hot Banana content management, BidHero, EmailLabs email marketing, and EmailAdvisor, a email delivery monitoring tool -- from a single user interface.

Lyris has done quite a bit of work to bring this integration to fruition, and if it lives up to its promise, could be a nice solution to the SMB market or independent divisions at larger companies.

As we've noted the importance of working with web analytics vendors with a commitment to a product roadmap, it appears that Lyris is following through on their vision. But for you the customer the story is of course a bit more complicated. Picking a "suite" of tools almost always means sacrificing a poor fit in one area or another in exchange for a (potentially) unified interface and single vendor invoice...