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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?

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.

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...

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...

WebTrends' Saga Continues...

philkemelor@pkwc.com(Phil Kemelor) — Mon, 19 Nov 2007 04:37:00 -0500

The changes at WebTrends continue.

A Friday afternoon email from the company explained that CMO Tim Kopp would be leaving at the end of this year. This follows the Halloween Day exits of CEO Greg Drew and 3 other managers and promotion of ClickShift co-founders John Rodkin and Leo Chang to engineering and hosted operations management. They served as co-founders of ClickShift which was acquired by WebTrends in 2006, providing the foundation for the WebTrends Dynamic Search product.

How does this affect you if you're a WebTrends' customer? Let's consider 3 areas of potential concern:

Technical Support: There's been a change of management for hosted services. WebTrends' has many licensed customers that it would like to move to the hosted services model. If you are a licensed customer, I suggest you speak to your account manager regularly to stay current on potential service changes meant to "encourage" you to switch to the hosted model.
Product Development: If you are considering the purchase of Score or Visitor Intelligence, get a clear understanding regarding pricing, support and the product development path. The management who left the company were key figures in bringing these deeper analytics solutions to market. It's not clear at this point what the new CEO and CMO will want to do with these offerings. Given the promotion of Rodkin and Chang, it seems logical that WebTrends will focus on doing more to sell WebTrends Analytics and Dynamic Search.
Customer Commitment: If you are an enterprise customer of WebTrends, and have a significant investment in using their solutions, speak with the new CEO and understand the company's commitment to your organization going forward. It may be the best way to understand Francisco Partners' longterm strategy for WebTrends.

While there's no way to predict what will happen with WebTrends, I doubt they'll be acquired Omniture.

Are you a WebTrends customer? I'd love to get your thoughts on the current changes. Drop me a line at pkemelor@cmswatch.com

WebTrends CEO is history

philkemelor@pkwc.com(Phil Kemelor) — Thu, 1 Nov 2007 10:37:00 -0400

Well that was the news out of Portland late yesterday from a piece in the Portland Business Journal. Also gone are Jason Palmer, vice president of product management; Tore Steen, vice president of business and corporate development; and Hamid Bahadori, vice president of product development and hosted operations.

There's not a lot of details coming out just at this time. However, if you have anything to share, please shoot me an email.

WebTrends has seemingly been on the come back trail with features such as Score and Visitor Intelligence. On the other hand, their WebTrends Marketing Warehouse has been slow to catch on with customers, and it's probable that their highly publicized effort to scoop up HBX customers hasn't paid off.

The new CEO is Bruce T. Coleman. Coleman is CEO of El Salto Advisors, a consulting firm that provides interim management to computer software and service companies.

Some former employees have speculated that Francisco Partners, the private equity firm that owns WebTrends is eager to unload the firm.

From an investor's perspective, this would seem to make sense. Web analytics is hot right now. But from a customers' perspective, quick sales don't often bring good tidings.

Mashing up Web Analytics and Web Content Management

tbyrne@cmswatch.com(Tony Byrne) — Tue, 23 Oct 2007 12:11:00 -0400

That was the title of a recent piece I wrote for EContent Magazine. To quote:

[T]here is a strong case to be made for integrating your Web CMS with your Web Analytics tool. You face two major opportunities in particular: First, using analytics to improve the effectiveness of your Web content management. And second, using your Web CMS to improve your analytic capability.

You can download a PDF reprint of the entire article here (5 MB).

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.

The Price is Wrong!

philkemelor@pkwc.com(Phil Kemelor) — Thu, 23 Aug 2007 22:57:00 -0400

Not long after my WebTrends Xmas in August Release post, WebTrends' Director of Product Marketing Matt Langie contacted me to tell me that I'd gotten their pricing wrong. Pricing for Marketing Data Warehouse is not $1000/month, as I thought I'd been told during the demo. Langie said this statement contained errors:

"Existing customers of the Marketing Warehouse will be upgraded to Score and Visitor Intelligence at no additional cost."

It should read:

"Existing customers of the WebTrends Marketing Warehouse will be upgraded to WebTrends Visitor Intelligence at no additional cost."

He added, "In addition, WebTrends Marketing Warehouse is no longer a standalone product that is licensed, but serves as the underlying database which powers the two new products in ML2, WebTrends Score, and WebTrends Visitor Intelligence. As such, new licensees of WebTrends Score or WebTrends Visitor Intelligence will now receive the Marketing Warehouse inclusive in these product offerings."

To this I responded with the following questions -- questions that you might ask as a current or potential customer:

What is the additional cost of Score for existing customers?
What is the cost of Score for new customers?
What is the cost of both Score and VI if purchased by new customers together?

Langie responded, "...we are not publicly disclosing the specific pricing for our new product offerings, added to the fact that each customer's unique requirements ultimately drive their level of investment into these new solutions. I would also add that both WebTrends Visitor Intelligence and WebTrends Score are priced on a usage model."

OK, so WebTrends doesn't want to publicly disclose its pricing, but I find the explanation somewhat hard to decipher. If you're a WebTrends customer, or thinking about becoming a customer, I suggest you ask the same questions that I did to clarify your costs.

What troubles me though is how pricing based on "unique requirements" has become the standard operating procedure among the largest web analytics firms -- not just WebTrends. Perhaps this is just a reflection of a software space maturing and coming up with more enterprisey licensing models -- "whatever you've got is what you'll pay" -- but for you the customer, this is not a good thing. I rarely meet a customer who completely understands their license or contract agreement. Vendors may consider their pricing as "flexible," but it's just plain confusing to most, and after my exchange with Mr. Langie, I'm left believing that the pricing for Marketing Lab 2 will remain a mystery to most until the first invoice, unless they're quite tenacious in their exploration.

Speaking of becoming a new WebTrends customer, the company announced its "Move to ML2" program earlier this month. Designed to play on the potential squeamishness being felt by Visual Sciences' HBX customers these days due to the likely sale of the company, the "Move to ML2" program allows HBX Analytics licensees to apply up to 100% license credit towards a new investment in WebTrends Marketing Lab 2 (ML2).

HBX customers considering taking the bait should know -- as we've discussed in the Web Analytics Report -- that switching analytics vendors is not a trivial task. Against the license credit, you need to consider costs and time for transferring historical data from HBX to Web Trends ML2 -- that is, unless you decide to throw that data away. Also think about going through the process of another implementation. WebTrends is not offering any other credits towards implementation, data migration, and so forth at this time, according to Langie.

While I don't think Visual Sciences is doing a great job of making its customers feel secure by announcing the company is for sale, it might be worth seeing how this story plays out. Given tightening capital markets, it might take longer for Visual Sciences to find a buyer than originally planned.

WebTrends' Xmas in August Release

philkemelor@pkwc.com(Phil Kemelor) — Fri, 10 Aug 2007 01:15:00 -0400

Web analytics vendor WebTrends released Marketing Lab 2 last week, an ambitious effort that seeks to raise both the analytics value of the product while improving usability.

The introduction of WebTrends "Score" and WebTrends "Visitor Intelligence" are the featured upgrades to the Marketing Warehouse Version 2.0. WebTrends Score enables you to set values on events in order to measure engagement. While the idea of setting values is not ground breaking, analysts who currently spend time doing this offline in Excel will save time setting up values within the interface and having reports generate natively.

WebTrends Visitor Intelligence essentially makes it easier to create segments and multi-dimensional reporting from the product's "Marketing Warehouse." By using SQL Server 2005, the UI enables you to use drag and drop functionality to select a specific number of cubes upon which to filter data and generate custom reports. The UI is well organized and its graphical approach -- powered by Ajax -- may make it more accessible to analysts.

Existing customers of the Marketing Warehouse will be upgraded to Score and Visitor Intelligence at no additional cost. Clearly, WebTrends hopes that these new services will incent other customers to upgrade to the Marketing Warehouse, at a cost of an additional $1,000/month.

In general, the UI work exhibited in this release does a lot to unify what had been disparate parts of the WebTrends offering. As Web Analytics Report readers know, previously you needed to access Dynamic Search, Analytics, and Marketing Warehouse separately. These are now all part of a single interface, a seemingly minor improvement, but one that should help analysts who use the tool on a daily basis.

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...