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Nedstat Sends a Message

philkemelor@pkwc.com(Phil Kemelor) — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 02:51:00 -0400

Last week, European web analytics vendor Nedstat announced a new feature called "Live Segmentation," which enables you to develop customized behavioral analysis across unaggregated web data.

This is a big step for Nedstat. Readers of the Web Analytics Report know that this missing capability was somewhat of a downside to an offering that competes in Europe with the likes of Omniture, and WebTrends -- two vendors already providing a "data warehouse"-type of feature that enables deeper and more customizable analysis.

I've seen Live Segmentation, and at first blush it looks pretty straightforward...clean interface; drop and drag filter building, and so forth. However, Live Segmentation has a singular benefit that can't be found in the technology itself: availability to all SiteStat customers at no additional cost to the basic offering.

Nedstat argues that all web analytics solutions should provide for this level of behavioral segmentation analysis as part of their core, and I would have to agree. Although why it has taken so long for vendors to follow through on this has been somewhat of a mystery. NetGenesis (a "first generation," log file-based, licensed software package) provided segmentation functionality in 1997, but tag-based, SaaS vendors have been slow to catch up. This is problematic, because these sorts of custom queries really lie at the heart of contemporary web analytics, which tries to move beyond the limitations of "out of the box" analysis and reporting queries.

Nevertheless, the marketplace is moving. Coremetrics' announced their "deep dive" segmentation analysis offering, Explore, in May, 2008. Unica, in its latest release, 7.4, also just announced this level of custom analysis. The difference here is that Nedstat is essentially providing deep behavioral segmentation analysis for free.

Web Analytics Vendor Cross-Check H2/2008

tregli@cmswatch.com(Phil Kemelor and Theresa Regli) — Thu, 7 Aug 2008 05:51:00 -0400

It is all too easy to select web analytics 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...

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.

Migrating from HBX to Omniture

philkemelor@pkwc.com(Phil Kemelor) — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 00:50:00 -0400

Web Analytics Report readers know that one of the biggest issues about Omniture SiteCatalyst is the complexity of the implementation. Former HBX customers (now part of the Omniture stable) are finding that SiteCatalyst is a significantly different tool because of the amount of customizations required.

Migration becomes a double-edges sword: you can get more functionality, but you have to work harder at it, and you may lose out on some of the things you liked about HBX, such as tagless campaigns. Although I hear reports of HBX customers leaving Omniture forCoremetrics' and WebTrends, there still seems to be a lot of interest in simply staying the course and enduring the migration.

As I've argued before, if you have a contract coming up for renewal, use this as an opportunity to check your requirements and test the waters.

However, if you want to go for the migration and you'd like to get a vendor-neutral take on how to deal with Omniture's ins and outs, I recommend taking a look at the Implementation Toolkit for SiteCatalyst published by Semphonic, the firm I work with. It's comprised of 6 parts: Implementation, Best Practices, Migrating from HBX to SiteCatalyst, SiteCatalyst Coding Standards for Flash, AJAX and DHTML, a Project Plan template and Functional Spec template. It's written for web analytics managers who are actively involved in HBX to SiteCatalyst migrations, SiteCatalyst administrators, and CMS managers and application developers who need to make sure that data is collected properly for Omniture SiteCatalyst.

As always, whether you plan to migrate or are considering another option, make sure you have figured out not only your metrics requirements, but whether stakeholders are actually using the data you're providing. I see too many situations where reports are simply thrown over the fence to stakeholders and they have to figure it all out on their own -- a waste of time and resources, whether you're using a free solution, like Google Analytics or Omniture.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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...

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

Coremetrics, Omniture Announce New Releases

philkemelor@pkwc.com(Phil Kemelor) — Sun, 23 Sep 2007 14:01:00 -0400

It's been a busy last week in the land of web analytics software vendors.

Coremetrics' officially launched Coremetrics 2008 and Omniture announced Genesis 2.

As readers of Web Analytics Report know, Genesis is the "plug and play" partnership program Omniture has with 3rd-party online marketing vendors to extend SiteCatalyst data collection and reporting. Omniture announced the Genesis 2.0 platform now has over 70 partners. Nevertheless, if you license SiteCatalyst, or are considering purchasing it because of Genesis, make sure you understand the level of effort required to perform the data integration, develop the customized reporting, and the additional costs for 3rd-party services. While it's true that you can theoretically integrate with SiteCatalyst, customers and partners find that extensibility, implementation ease, and metrics availability all vary.

Coremetrics took a bit of a different approach in this latest release. As I wrote in last week's Coremetrics Jr. post, the company has focused on improving its data processing infrastructure. As a potential buyer, you should investigate whether the Coremetrics "all in one" pricing has any advantages over its competitors.

Instead of focusing new functionality on integrations with many external partners, Coremetrics concentrated on how to improve the relationship between analytics and its own "Precision Marketing Suite" offerings, LIVEmail and Intelligent Offer. As described in the Web Analytics Report, exporting data from Online Analytics to the "suitemate"" solutions was based primarily on lessons learned and methodology refinement, at extra cost and after potentially long professional services engagements.

The new release enables data integration directly from the UI through a segmentation selection wizard, specific data field export to LIVEmail, targeting of data exports to LIVEmail, Intelligent Offer and other campaign vehicles. The Intelligent Offer enhancement provides for UI based integration of the segmentation and setting of product recommendations with LIVEmail to more specifically target email marketing. LIVEmail now offers integration with 16 email partners, including Cheetahmail, eDialog, Exact Target, and Responsys.

If the Coremetrics 2008 release performs as promised, it will address some major pain points that have dogged this vendor over the last year. If enhanced marketing features are critical to your vendor selection and you're looking at Coremetrics, you'll want to demo it with your own data to make sure that it works as advertised.

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.

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...