CMS Watch Lyris Feed

Web Analytics Market Churns for Omniture and Yahoo! Web Analytics

philkemelor@pkwc.com(Phil Kemelor) — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 13:34:00 -0400

>Omniture's share price tanked last week after it was downgraded by a Wall St analyst who found that companies consider web analytics to be a discretionary cost, as well as "an increasingly competitive environment for OMTR."

Readers of the Web Analytics Report, and my post about web analytics leadership know that I'd agree with the comment about a competitive marketplace in analytics.

This was borne out in even starker terms by the long awaited announcement later in the week on the launch of Yahoo! Web Analytics, the solution based on IndexTools. Yahoo! Web Analytics is a no-cost solution that is geared to serious web analysts who want to do behavioral segmentation on unaggregated data. If you're an experienced web analyst, this would be worth a closer look. One important note to this: Yahoo! Web Analytics is not freely available to the entire market. As described on the Yahoo blog, the initial rollout is limited to Yahoo! Small Business' 13,000 hosted e-commerce customers, Yahoo! Web Analytics out to advertisers who seek Yahoo!’s help to build custom micro-sites, and third-party application developers who build widgets and other mini-apps for Yahoo! users via the Yahoo developer network.

Just as Nedstat raised the bar by offering analysis across unaggregated data at no additional cost in its "Live Segmentation" release, the Yahoo! Web Analytics offering puts pressure on all web analytics vendors to provide what had been previously considered a premium option, at no cost. Web analytics vendors have publically stated that Google Analytics didn't cause much concern because it is considered more of a reporting product than serious analytics platform, however, the Yahoo! Web Analytics offering potentially creates pricing pressure at the higher end of tool functionality.

So what's the next move from the web analytics vendors?

Look to see a more meaningful push to integrate web analytics data with third party marketing vendors from Coremetrics,WebTrends , ClickTracks and Omniture. When I say more meaningful, I mean productized integrations. Also expect to see greater emphasis from Unica and WebTrends on exporting data out of their solutions into corporate data warehouses for use in business intelligence scenarios with non-web data.

The upcoming eMetrics conference in Washington, DC on October 20-23 will be quite interesting, as the vendors will have their first major venue to articulate their positions in the wake of the Yahoo! Web Analytics release.

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.

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.

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...

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

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).

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."

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...

ClickTracks CEO moving on

philkemelor@pkwc.com(Phil Kemelor) — Mon, 18 Jun 2007 14:49:00 -0400

With little fanfare, ClickTracks' CEO John Marshall is leaving his post to pursue other opportunities. This perhaps isn't too surprising considering that ClickTracks was purchased in August by e-marketing roll-up company, J.L. Halsey. Marshall founded ClickTracks with Stephen Turner in 2000 and focused on analytics for the SMB market. In my research for The Web Analytics Report and subsequent chats, I found Marshall to be the most accessible web analytics vendor CEO in the market; someone who didn't mind explaining the finer points about ClickTracks data processing, storage, and query model -- as well as web analytics issues in general. He didn't just talk about product usability; he tried to guide the company to focus on user experience as a critical part of its feature set. This led to the development of a highly graphical interface and a well regarded visitor segmentation capability...features that still stand out.

There are no plans to replace Marshall, according to an e-mail I received from Loren McDonald, J.L. Halsey's VP Corporate Communications. In line with their strategic plan to transition from a holding company toward a single, integrated firm, J.L. Halsey is moving away from CEOs/GMs of the acquired companies toward centralized functions, such as sales, marketing, engineering, support, product management, and HR.

Without Marshall's focus on innovation, it will be interesting to see how J.L. Halsey addresses the increasing competition from Google Analytics, as well as how it will integrate ClickTracks' with other J.L. Halsey companies such as CMS vendor HotBanana, email marketing vendors Lyris, EmailLabs, and SparkList.

J.L. Halsey acquires Hot Banana

tregli@cmswatch.com(Theresa Regli) — Thu, 24 Aug 2006 08:34:00 -0400

The playfully-named web content management vendor Hot Banana announced an acquisition by J.L. Halsey Corporation earlier this week (at the same time, ClickTracks Analytics was scooped up as well). We got to know Ontario, Canada-based Hot Banana over the past year, and the forthcoming tenth edition of our CMS Report will feature a full evaluation of the product. A simple WCMS with integrated analytics and the mission of providing effective micro-applications to marketers, it makes sense that J.L. Halsey (a provider of "marketing technology solutions" to mid-market businesses) would want to add HB to their arsenal. Still, we're surprised Hot Banana's owners cashed out so early, given the company was just starting to show real growth south of the 49th parallel. We also question J.L. Halsey's rollup strategy: a lot of small, distributed companies don't necessarily make a cohesive marketing product suite, especially if they lack integration. We'll continue to watch Hot Banana and report back as the situation ripens.