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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.

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?

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.

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."

Getting real about MPM and other silver bullets

philkemelor@pkwc.com(Phil Kemelor) — Mon, 25 Jun 2007 15:33:00 -0400

Nick Sharp, the VP and general manager for EMEA at WebTrends, recently wrote a piece for mycustomer.com titled "Web Analytics is dead!". The gist of the article is that web marketers should not look at web analytics data in a vacuum, but rather, use it to drive marketing campaigns and solutions. No disagreement with the premise, and as I wrote in the Web Analytics Report, vendors continue to set up partner integration networks that enable web analytics to be the "brains behind emarketing."

There's a few things I find interesting in reading the article. One is the use of the term "Marketing Performance Management" (MPM). What is MPM exactly? According to Sharp, it's "...a consistent metrics framework for all online marketing channels so marketers have one source of data and can target segments of customers with relevant marketing messages." He concludes by writing, "Naturally it requires a leap of faith for marketers to put their trust in technology to manage a task most organisations have carried out manually in the past. But....organisations will soon discover that if they want to stay ahead of the competition and engage with consumers effectively, MPM is the only way to improve their online marketing performance."

Sounds great. If a vendor comes calling with this silver bullet, your management may indeed line up to buy in. Omniture,Visual Sciences, Fireclick Coremetrics, Unica and SageMetrics all stress the same objective.

As I wrote in an ealier post, web analytics vendors primarily target marketers, who typically see the business value more clearly than IT. However, as analytics moves into the realm of integration with other technologies and marketing solutions, it is even more critical for marketers to work with IT teams to understand the back-end integration issues required to make that silver bullet even close to a reality.

So I'll suggest that internet marketers reach out to their IT counterparts and vice versa, to establish communication through designated points of contact and cross-functional project teams, as well as establish mechanisms to evaluate how marketing partner solutions integrate with web analytics tools. This will ensure that solutions are evaluated, tested, and implemented with a focus on due diligence, security, and administration requirements and that appropriate maintenance and support processes are put in place after the implementation. MPM makes for a fancy new acronym, but real integration is never a walk in the park...

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.