Web Analytics Management

Son of Nedstat: comScore’s Digital Analytix vs. SiteCatalyst, Google Analytics, Webtrends et al – Pricing and Uniques

In the first part of this two-part post on Digital Analytix, Chris Meares and Royce Fung reviewed the solution’s segmentation, database architecture and reporting UI.

In this follow up, Ryan Praskievicz takes a look at another area where Digital Analytics appears to trump SiteCatalyst…cardinality. If you’re not familiar with the term cardinality and you use SiteCatalyst, perhaps you’re familiar with the term “uniques exceeded.”  Ryan explains how this affects your web analytics reporting. I’ll finish up with a short section on pricing.

 

Ryan Praskievicz @ryanpraski

Cardinality Comparison – Digital Analytix, Google Analytics, Adobe Omniture SiteCatalyst

Digital Analytix (DA)-  has no variable cardinality limitations.  If you have millions of unique products, campaign identifiers, or any other data with cardinality issues you can think of, DA can report and segment on all the values.  It will be interesting to see just how fast DA returns reporting queries on multiple dimensions and metrics with millions, even billions of unique values.   

Google Analytics (GA):  there is a 50,000 daily unique value limit for each table (a table being a dimension within GA like Page, Event Category, Event Action, Event Label,etc).  Once a table hits the 50,000 limit all the subsequent values are grouped together as (other). Once captured there is no way to know way to see what is in the (other) group.  There are possible workarounds like creating multiple profiles to capture different pieces of your data.  For example if your site sells electronics you could create separate profiles for Televisions, Computers, Video Games, etc.  Then you would be able to see 50,000 unique daily products for each of the profiles.  This would ensure that all your product data was captured, but the drawback of this set up is that your data is sits in silos by product type and analysis across profiles is not possible. 

Google Analytics (other) for the pages report

 

Omniture:

SiteCatalyst: there is a 500,000 monthly unique value limit per variable. This applies to all SiteCatalyst variables including page name, campaign tracking code, products, referrers, etc.  Once the 500,000 unique value limit is hit, all subsequent values for the month are grouped together as Uniques Exceeded.  Where Omniture differs from Google Analytics, is that even though the SiteCatalyst data is being bucketed as Uniques Exceeded, the contents of the Uniques Exceeded bucket can still be accessed.  To get reporting with no cardinality limits in Omniture you can use DataWarehouse.  The drawback of DataWarehouse is that for queries with large amounts of data may take hours or even days to return results.

SiteCatalyst Uniques Exceeded

 

Discover:  there is a 500,000 monthly unique value limit per variable.  In Discover the same cardinality limits as SiteCatalyst apply.  In Discover each unique line item beyond the 500,000 monthly unique limit is shown as Unknown rather than in SiteCatalyst where the data is grouped together as a single line item: Uniques Exceeded.  Again you always have the option of using DataWarehouse to get actual values for the Unknown line items in Discover. 

Discover Unknown

 

Pricing

While I can’t discuss pricing in specific terms, based on what was presented, the model is based on server calls as is the norm. However, Digital Analytix uses a two cookie approach to process data. This sends data into a SuperSite (same as a Global Report Suite in SiteCatalyst) and into subsidiary report suites. This eliminates the need for multiple server calls and consequently potentially less expense.  It does appear that there will be modules that while optional, will likely be necessary if you want to have a robust and complete measurement solution. As with any fee-based solution, I recommend that you understand what you’re paying for and how what’s featured in the demo translates to your contract so there are no surprises.

Son of Nedstat: comScore’s Digital Analytix vs. SiteCatalyst, Google Analytics, Webtrends et al

I started following Nedstat when I wrote the first CMSWatch Web Analytics Report in 2007. Based in Amsterdam, the company never got much attention outside of Europe, even though it was the largest analytics vendor outside of North America. Over the years, the company built a loyal following of clients, driven by excellent, localized service, fair pricing and an interest in providing innovative features that were introduced either before or at the same time as its North American counterparts, such as video analytics, third party integration and an emphasis on providing “on the fly” segmentation.  

I thought Nedstat’s purchase by comScore last summer would make for a potentially interesting option in a market that was starting to witness a lack of choice in enterprise analytics solutions. I also liked the idea that an audience measurement company was getting into analytics and could understand the complementary nature of behavioral analytics to its core business. From an acquisition perspective, it seemed to make sense.

So, with this as a background, Semphonic was invited to attend a 3 day partner training at comScore’s Reston, VA headquarters to dive deep into the tool. My colleagues, Chris Meares, Ryan Praskievicz and Royce Fung joined me, and I asked them to share their takeaways on the “son of Nedstat” that is now comScore Digital Analytix (DA). With that being said, I was really impressed by the comScore’s team interest in trainee feedback, and commitment to acting on a range of recommendations to further improve the offering.  This is a long post, but I think you’ll find it a very thorough analysis of where DA stands today.  We’ll hear from Chris and Royce today, and Ryan later this week.  I think Chris sums up the general feeling in the class in his opening…

 

From Chris Meares, Senior Consultant, @chris_meares:

The first thing everyone asks me is “How does it compare to Omniture (Adobe) or Google Analytics?” What I am going to tell you is how it doesn’t compare to Omniture or Google Analytics and it can be summed up in three words, un-aggregated, segmentation and integration.  Obviously, the tools mentioned previously do all, or some, of these items also, but none do it as well as DA.  Here is a brief overview of each term and how DA differs from its competitors.

Unaggregated data

Digital Analytix (DA) stores all of the data it receives from your site in un-aggregated form which means you have the ability to slice and dice it anyway you like and you are not held to the constraints of how it is collected as is with other tools.  It also means there is no data sampling which is seen daily in Google Analytics and occasionally in Omniture Discover.  Omniture does have a data warehousing feature but the lag time on running reports using data warehousing is immense whereas DA allows you to run queries in real time with impressive speed.  Of course, DA doesn’t have a client base in the US yet and it will be interesting to see how the lag time increases (or not) once they begin collecting enormous amounts of data.   The other advantage of un-aggregated data comes into play when doing attribution to campaigns.  DA allows you to set up different attribution models on the same sets of data at the same time such as first click, last click, linear increasing/decreasing, equal share to all, etc., in order to see the differences in attribution models in real time.  This is something that cannot be done in other web analytics solutions.

Segmentation 

Digital Analytix (DA) has the best segmentation capabilities I have seen in a web analytics solution.  You can segment, in real time, on any of your data points and create reports and do deep dive analysis.  Also, you can have as many custom variables as you see fit, you are not set to a specific number, either per page or per site.  Because it is included “out of the box” with the DA package and because it can segment in real time, it has an advantage over both previously mentioned competitors.  It is one of the most flexible segmentation tools in the market that I have seen.

Integration

The last area that sets Digital Analytix (DA) apart at the moment is the integration feature that is included with the solution.   DA can integrate with your email service provider, your voice of customer tool, your multivariate testing tool and Google Adsense.  It also has the ability to integrate directly with your backend database either via Data Lookup (a SQL database hosted by DA) or through data merge (data that is uploaded nightly), which allows you to easily combine offline and online data. 

Segmentation is available on all of the integrated pieces because it all part of one interface.  It will also integrate with comScore’s audience measurement business which will allow clients to see demographic data based directly in their analytics solution.  This seems to be a huge hook for DA but was not actually shown during the training so I am not quite sure how it will exactly work. 

Final Takeaway from Chris

There are a few concerns with Digital Analytix.  The user interface is slightly clunky and is a work in progress.  It currently feels like it is more focused on the power user or full time analyst. Occasional users may find it difficult to get the reporting they need without some heavy training.  Like any enterprise level implementation, it will take extensive time with the client to figure out business needs in order to set out a road map that will allow correct data capture.   If DA can upgrade their user interface to the level of Webtrends or even Site Catalyst then I believe it can be a major player in the marketplace.

 

From Royce Fung, Consultant, [email protected]:

While not necessarily groundbreaking as a whole, the tool is clearly catered towards those willing to invest time and resources into their web analytics tool and those who seek to drive their web strategy from a deeper understanding of user behavior on their website.

DA is striving for the high end of enterprise web analytics tools and is unabashed at saying it aims to wrest away Omniture’s dominance at the top end of the spectrum.  After seeing the tool and getting some insight into its development path, I believe, in time, it has more than a chance at doing this.

Reporting

The browser-based tool provides a range of metrics on par with the other top tier analytics tools.  Report Builder allows for building and saving customized reports.  There is also an easily accessible way to create custom, calculated metrics based on a mathematical formula.  Definitions tend to be very precise in DA.  This forces users to select between and, therefore, recognize nuances such as something that takes place within a visit-based scope or an event-based scope.  Ultimately this is a good thing -- it certainly raises the bar when it comes to the web metrics reporting – though I can envision it being initially frustrating to many.

Reporting Interface

The Reporting Interface is, all-around perhaps, one of the biggest drawbacks of the tool.  In order for reports to be displayed, they must be put into what most users might think of as a dashboard.  The interface tends to require users to work within sub-menus, making the overall experience somewhat tedious.  For example, to add a report to the Report display, users enters a rather small dedicated interface that requires a bit of navigation before performing even the simplest report.  From the Report display, several clicks are required to produce a simple visits report, even when using the default parameters, compared to just one click in SiteCatalyst.  Editing of reports suffers from the same type of syndrome.

DirectView

DirectView is a useful tool comparable to Omniture’s ClickMap.  Some of the common limitations apply, such as the reporting of flash-based elements as well as separating multiple identical links on a page.

Live Segmentation

Segmentation is very robust and can be applied to all or individually to reports.  Segments can also be applied in DirectView, which is a really nice feature (and a common theme of how well everything is tied together and integrated), though, we did not see this demonstration.  The ability to apply segments live at a top level to the Reports display, to individual reports, or to individual metrics is very impressive. 

Again, there are some shortfalls with the interface, but overall it is a comparatively strong feature.

Data Integration

A lot of thought has clearly been placed on integrating data sources.  And coming from comScore, owners of a treasure trove of data, it isn’t all that surprising.  DA has placed heavy emphasis on allowing clients to integrate data from other sources whether they come from comScore’s other range of products, third party sources or the clients own internal data sources.

By leveraging its RING integration clients can for example, not just track the success of an email campaign, but segment that population in DA to create a specific target audience for a follow-up campaign.  The integration with the email provider allows for specifying that target audience in the form of an email list.

Campaigns

On the subject of campaigns, comScore’s expertise in market intelligence and the media industry clearly shows through in the DA product.  Much thought has been given to areas such as campaigns and the concept of engagement, and DA clients can make use of this, particularly with the eCommerce add-on module.  How conversions can be applied to campaigns can be adjusted very precisely (again, scope comes into play, as well as other definition rules).  Clients can also assign the weighting of content contributing to engagement on the site, by making use of an engagement score which can be assigned to individual pages. As of now, point values must be tagged (that is, they cannot be set up in an interface), but this is set to be addressed by the end of the year.

Video Tracking

Video tracking can be finely tuned with the StreamSense add-on module, though standard DA seems to have much of the basic milestone-based measurements that I suspect many would find sufficient interaction with a video player can be tracked with StreamSense.

Final Takeaway from Royce

Overall, the tool is built with precision and deep measuring capability in mind.  It also attempts to get the most out of its data integration capabilities and from that stand point succeeds in not simply being a web analyst tool but a broader business tool.  Having an existing client base, many with the UDM tag already in place, will be a huge plus initially for comScore in getting a number of customers on board to DA.

 

 

An “Under the Hood” Look at SiteCatalyst 15

On the fly segmentation, additional variables and custom events, display of multiple metrics on a single graph and presentation of unique visitors, visits and page views on all reports are the upgrades that got most folks excited about last week’s preview of SiteCatalyst 15 at the Omniture Summit. My colleague Gary Angel has a nice summary of these features in his recent post.

I thought one of the more interesting upgrades is about what you don’t readily see…how data in SiteCatalyst is processed. In the new version, you will be able to have what appears to be significant more control over how your data is processed as it goes into SiteCatalyst than you do currently, and will likely need to depend less on s_code customization and VISTA rule implementation to achieve this flexibility. This data processing rules control will be available from the Admin interface. What this means in “on the ground” terms is still a bit murky based on the conversations I’ve had with Omniture team, but I like the fact that this is being introduced. It’s definitely a step in the right direction.

SiteCatalyst Data Processing Today

Today, to really control how data is processed in SiteCatalyst, you need to either do a lot of customization on the s_code, as well as pay for expensive VISTA rules. If you’re a SiteCatalyst customer you know that there are roadblock issues associated with both methods.

For s_code modifications, not only do you need to unit test your code, but if you’re in a large enterprise or one that has established IT change control processes, you may need to have the new code go through additional QA as it moves through test and production environments. If you live in this world, you know that this can often take a lot of time and impact your ability to collect data in a timely manner.

VISTA rules allow you to populate multiple variables based on a keyed value in another variable. Internal IP filtering, for example, is a good candidate for a separate VISTA rule. Sites with complicated page hierarchy or intense usage of URL parameters often will use VISTA rules to decipher information in the page URL and populate more user-friendly or analytically useful variables. VISTA can also be used for visitor segmentation purposes, populating visitor information based on source or page URL. Not only are VISTA rules expensive, but you need to contact your Account Manager to set them up.

First Look at SiteCatalyst Admin Based Processing

On first look, the new Admin based processing control will mitigate reliance on both VISTA rules and s_code customization. It isn’t completely clear at this point how much, but it is certainly a step in the right direction for enabling easier implementation and maintenance. This addresses a key sore spot in SiteCatalyst and has certainly been a contributing factor for some organizations to just give up on using it.  

If you are a bit concerned about having so much control over your data processing at basically the flip of a switch, you should. If you implement a rule incorrectly you could seriously and irrevocably compromise your data collection and accuracy.

Omniture has considered this as well. Prior to allowing any clients to use the data processing rules dashboard, you will need to be certified by Omniture as an administrator. This will be a new certification. Sure, it’s another money making opportunity for Omniture, but I think this training and certification makes sense. 

I think there’s a bit of irony here as well if you have an historical perspective on web analytics. In the “olden” days of enterprise log file analyzers, you really needed a systems administrator to manage the tool for tasks such as log file importing, stitching, and processing (and of course, those that use systems like Webtrends, Urchin and Unica still do). As web analytics migrated away from IT and into Web and online marketing teams (due in large part through analytics vendor changes in sales direction) there has been an emphasis on not having IT involved. Now, we have another example of analytics coming back to having a resource involved who understands how data works and what occurs under the hood with data. Perhaps it isn’t someone in IT, but it must certainly be someone who is more in the weeds than a typical online marketing or web content manager or even a web analyst.

This will be something new to those who have relied on a software as a service model for web analytics. I think it speaks to the need to view digital analytics as a program with its own leadership, governance, and process. If you’d like to read more about how to develop this in your organization, I invite you to take a look at my white paper on managing digital analytics.

Related Posts:

Omniture Summit

Is Omniture Stepping into a Privacy Morass with Demdex Acquisition?

Getting a Grip on Digital Analytics

P.S - I'll be giving a tutorial on developing business-focused web metrics at the JBoye 11 conference in Philadelphia on Tuesday, May 3 and a conference presentation about the work we've done with The Nature Conservancy. Hope to see you there.

P.P.S - If you're a non-profit, I invite you to take the X Change Web Analytics Challenge.

Is Omniture Stepping into a Privacy Morass with Demdex Acquisition?

The opening session at an Omniture Summit is a mix of pep rally, vision and celebration. Today’s event did not disappoint.  To start the show, VP and GM of Omniture, Brad Rencher, tossed out some interesting stats about the audience.  The one that struck me was that 40% of total online ad spend was represented by the companies in the room. That’s a pretty big number. So, it was not surprising that a big part of the “vision” aspect of the session was all about online advertising and the potential value offered to online advertisers by the January, 2011 acquisition of Demdex.

Online advertising is where the money is…$109 billion by 2013 according to IDC… and Adobe Omniture is placing itself squarely in the middle of trying to enable both advertisers and publishers do a better job of targeting ads. Demdex is a platform that allows you to aggregate all information you can get your hands on about online visitors. It’s like a CRM system, but allows you to put data in from external sources, such as Demdex’s data partners Acxiom, Datalogix, Exelate and TargusInfo.  It’s a pretty powerful concept, no doubt. Vivek Shah, CEO of Ziff Davis, went into a surprisingly detailed description of how they’ve created BuyerBase, a targeted platform focused on 40 million tech buyers, with the Demdex technology.

Well, as one of the opening session speakers quipped, “the Omniture Summit is like Woodstock for geeks”…Or something to that effect. So if all of this talk about how to use data for online advertising gets folks feeling as heady as the contraband passed around at Woodstock, is there also a parallel to the “brown acid” warning in the form of privacy?  Demdex seems like just the type of company that the FTC was talking about in its Privacy Report.

Demdex claims that it is a good citizen when it comes to providing consumers with a view into all the data that is collected about them and be able to opt out. This is accomplished through the Digital Advertising Alliance (DAA) opt out program.  According to Politico, FTC Chairman Jon Leibowitz was questioning this effort, "We commend industry's effort to get a broad group of industry leaders on board. However, the effectiveness of this effort will depend on how, and the extent to which, the opt-out is actually implemented and enforced - all of which is yet to be seen. We also urge industry to make sure that the opt-out is easy for consumers to find, use, and understand."

If visitors don’t accept third party cookies, they won’t be tracked by Demdex.  However, the issue for Adobe Omniture is to both make sure they provide clear and effective options into opt out so it provides Demdex customers with both powerful marketing and something that isn’t going to get regulated out of existence. Maybe this will be covered in next year’s Summit opening session…probably not as exciting as today, but certainly something that will make all potentially interested purchasers be able to rest more easily.

Google Analytics and Yahoo! Analytics Privacy, Data Ownership and Data Expiration

With the Office of Management and Budget providing a framework for enabling the use of persistent cookies for web site measurement (see post on New OMB Guidance for details) there is lots of interest among Federal web managers and communications staff in using Google Analytics (GA) and Yahoo! Analytics (YWA) the predominant “no cost” solutions on the market. At the same time, I hear lots of hesitancy about using the solutions because of concerns and questions about:

• Whether Google Analytics and Yahoo! Analytics use analytics data for marketing
• Their data collection opt out policies for both site visitors and site owners
• Data ownership

If you’re in the private or non-profit sectors and are considering using these solutions, or currently using GA or YWA, you should know that both solutions have recently modified their privacy policies and opt-out capabilities to address the increasing concern about site visitor control over their data.

What I find interesting about the GA and YWA options is the paths each company has taken over the last year. I think they are quite divergent, and they may reflect business goals that go well beyond the sphere of web analytics.

Google Analytics

Google Analytics provides you with a number of options for controlling data, and the acceptance of Google Analytics among site visitors. In fact, as a site owner, you will need to think about the options you’d like to present to visitors. Google is becoming increasingly interested in addressing privacy issues raised in the US and Europe and the promotion of control over data is one avenue that they are taking.

Using Data for Marketing

GA provides options that are fairly nuanced, so you really need to consider what each one provides.

• Data sharing

When we think about sharing data, concerns often focus on the issue of “I don’t want my site’s visitor information given to Google for their marketing efforts” or “I don’t want my site’s visitor information going to a third party for their marketing efforts.”

GA covers this pretty well. If you go to your Account Settings, you can choose how you want your data shared, if at all. Selecting “Do not share my Google Analytics data” effectively prevents Google from using the data for marketing purposes.

• Opt out

Personally, I’d always recommend to your site visitors that if they don’t want to be tracked on your site, then direct them to manage this through their browser settings. However, if you want to give them another path, you can direct them to download a GA plug in that will disable GA tracking on any site they visit…not just yours. While this may be a civic-minded option to offer, I don’t endorse it because you’re encouraging visitors not to be tracked. I wrote about this in some detail in an earlier blog post. You can check out the plug-in directly at http://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout?hl=en. I affectionately call this the Nuclear Option.

• Anonymize IP

GA already obscures IP addresses so that you cannot report on visitor level data.Now, you can further anonymize IP addresses through the addition of additional code to your GA tag. This will remove the last octet of the IP address prior to its storage, and slightly reduce the accuracy of geographic reporting, according to Google.

Just keep in mind that these options apply to your site visitors and the data you collect on their activities.  They don’t apply to you, the GA account owner.

Let’s start with the Terms of Service for GA <http://www.google.com/analytics/tos.html> and go down to point #6. INFORMATION RIGHTS AND PUBLICITY. This passage explains that Google won’t share your data with third parties. Now, go to the link within #6 to Google’s Privacy Policy < http://www.google.com/privacy.html>.

This describes privacy for use of all Google services. I’ve summarized the items that will be of most interest if you’re using Google Analytics:

Information you provide – describes how Google uses the data you’ve provided when you sign up for a Google Account. So, if you’re going to open your GA account, you’ll need to provide your name and email address. Google can use this information to, in their words, “provide you with a better experience and to improve the quality of our services.”

Cookies – Google uses cookies to track your visits. If you are using GA, they will track your usage. This is also used to “to improve the quality of our service.”

Log information – When you access GA, their servers record your visit, as well as information such as, “Internet Protocol address, browser type, browser language, the date and time of your request and one or more cookies that may uniquely identify your browser or your account.”

And in case you didn’t get it from the “Information you provide” section, the following statement concludes the list:

“In addition to the above, we may use the information we collect to:

• Provide, maintain, protect, and improve our services (including advertising services) and develop new services; and
• Protect the rights or property of Google or our users.”

So, the bottom line is that if you open a GA account and provide usage to others in your organization, Google can use that data for marketing and product development purposes.

Recommendation - If you’re a Federal government site, select the “Do not share my Google Analytics data” and direct people to use their browser opt out. Go to USA.gov if you need a template to work from. Remember that you must update your privacy policy per the OMB directive before you start using GA. See NIH and NCI privacy policy examples as templates.

If you’re a commercial site, consider your site visitors’ privacy vs. the advantages of using Google’s benchmarking services and select your data sharing option accordingly. Remember to be up front and transparent about this in your privacy policy.

Data Ownership and Other Considerations

Don’t let “free” obscure your vision. Read the Terms of Service and know what you’re signing up for. Also notice what isn’t covered.

• Google indicates in that it “may retain and use, subject to the terms of its Privacy Policy (located at http://www.google.com/privacy.html), or such other URL as Google may provide from time to time), information collected in Your use of the Service.” Yes, they provide the opt out and data sharing options described above so that appears to mitigate unauthorized usage. Of course, they could make this a bit clearer. You’ve got to keep drilling down to get the whole story, and then you end up back either back in the TOS or mucking about in the Privacy Center.
• From #2. Fees and Services: “the Service is provided without charge to You for up to 5 million page views per month per account, and if You have an active Adwords campaign in good standing, the Service is provided without charge to You without a page view limitation.” If you have a  a site with more than 5 million page views, plan to do an Adwords campaign.
• Data retention: With fee-based tools, there is generally a default length of time that data is kept and this can be negotiated. There is no such guarantee with Google Analytics. Even though we’ve seen data kept for indefinite periods, there is nothing in the Terms of Service to ensure that this policy will continue.
• Data sampling: GA samples visits on reports with 500K visits within a selected date range to return reports within a reasonable time frame.

Recommendation - Google Analytics may be a good choice for your Federal agency web site, especially if you have little or no budget for web analytics, have less than 5 million page views per month and are comfortable with archiving your reports on a regular basis.

 

Yahoo! Web Analytics

YWA is distinctly different than GA in that its goal as an analytics tool is to provide the potential for delivering data that can be attributed to specific visitors. This is consistent with all fee-based options.

Using Data for Marketing

Yahoo is pretty up front about using YWA data for marketing and product development. This is described in the Terms of Service <http://info.yahoo.com/legal/us/yahoo/ywa/ywa-4750.html>. According to the TOS, under Analytics Program Terms, you must state this in your Privacy Policy:

NOTICE AND ABILITY TO OPT-OUT. You will prominently display within your website’s privacy policy a notice that includes each of the following disclosures in close proximity: (i) a statement that expressly identifies Yahoo! as a provider of third-party web beacons on your website(s), (ii) a statement that describes your use of the data gathered by the Analytics, (iii) a statement that expressly identifies Yahoo! and its use of the Analytics data to improve Yahoo!’s products and services and to provide advertisements about goods and services that may be of interest to end users, and (iv) a statement that describes how the end user may learn more about the choices offered in connection with the use of Analytics information, including an active link to the following URL: http://info.yahoo.com/privacy/us/yahoo/opt_out/targeting/details.html.

This is followed in the TOS by sample language that you can use.

Enabling visitors to opt out of YWA is a bit convoluted. The company recently removed the stand alone opt out for YWA and combined it with general opt out options for the ad network. Unfortunately, there’s nothing on the ad network opt out page <http://info.yahoo.com/privacy/us/yahoo/opt_out/targeting/details.html> that indicates anything about YWA.

Visitors need to know to select “Opt Out” as shown in the screen shot. This opt out is a cookie-based solution, and visitors must keep the third party cookie on their machine for it to be effective. Like the Google Opt Out plug-in, I don’t recommend this direction, and would much rather you push the browser based opt out from your site.

Unlike GA, but similar to fee based tools, such as Omniture, Webtrends, Unica and Coremetrics, there is no anonymizing of IP addresses.

Recommendation - If you’re a Federal government site, I could see some issues about using YWA. While the transparency is all good, you may cause some dust ups by telling visitors that their data is being used by Yahoo, as well as indicating to the public that you are passing their data to Yahoo. True, the data passed to Yahoo is an aggregate number, and there’s no personal information being transferred, but try explaining that nuance to your boss or the hundreds of thousands of visitors coming to your site.

Data Ownership and Other Considerations

Pretty much the same as GA…no mention of data retention in the TOS, although YWA assures me that it’s their policy to never expire your data. I believe their good intentions, but if it’s not in the TOS, then it isn’t guaranteed. YWA does not sample data, but you can make arrangements for data sampling if you’d want to explore this option. Like GA, the TOS is written clearly as a document that gives you the right to use YWA as long as and under the terms laid out by Yahoo, and like GA, these terms can change at any time. Remember…it’s free.

Recommendation - YWA may be a good choice for your Federal agency web site, especially if you have little or no budget for web analytics, and you don’t mind that visitor data is going to Yahoo to provide them with info to be used for their marketing and product development efforts. Like GA, I’d recommend that you archive your reports in case there comes a time when data isn’t kept indefinitely.

Summing Up

While I’ve spent this post describing the data capture issues for both of these “no cost” tools, these are just a few of the requirements to consider in selection. They both have differences in data collection, reporting and analysis that you should look into as well before deciding which one works best for your overall analytics requirements.

 

 

 

"Hands Off" Web Analytics

The fall season has seen its share of new releases from both new and old analytics vendors. A common thread among all is the emphasis on providing a call to action that is based on the data, but doesn’t require “hands on” analysis of the data.  This is a trend that is changing the nature of web analytics product development, the use of analytics within organizations and how the role of web analytics professionals will be defined.

Two of the newer services I learned about recently exemplify this real time, “hands off” call to action approach…DemandBase and SeeWhy.

DemandBase takes IP addresses and then resolves them against a group of publicly-available databases that enrich the data with company name, industry type, specific address location, # of employees at each location and names and titles of executives and managers. DemandBase uses sources such as Hoovers, EDGAR, B2B publication subscriber data and D&B data to add to the standard method of IP address resolution. I think it’s an interesting approach …just some fairly straightforward enhancement of IP data with business information that sales and marketing folks use every day to make business decisions. Customers who I’ve spoken to are seeing the value initially as a sales lead tool…qualifying companies who’ve visited the site more than once and looking at particular content pages with frequency. Then they make inbound sales calls. One customer I spoke to is starting to play with the DemandBase data and match it up with their Omniture analytics. It’s a bit of a sandbox project right now, but they’re trying to tie the Omniture cookie and IP addresses with the DemandBase data. They’ll then create segments in Omniture based on company size and industry to help them guide content development and re-marketing potential.

Re-marketing is the focus of another relatively new analytics service called SeeWhy. Concentrating on sending a follow up offer to those who abandon shopping carts, SeeWhy provides a service which isn’t new…providing a list of email addresses of those who have abandoned so you can send an offer that brings them back for a sale. I was a bit skeptical when I first looked at SeeWhy because you can already get lists of email addresses of those who have abandoned shopping carts and send follow up emails. The value add in See Why is that you get this information “out of the box.” There’s no need to set up any filters, custom reports or go to a “data warehouse” module to pull the data. The company sends you a list of the abandoning visitors at the end of each business day.

DemandBase and SeeWhy are exploiting key weaknesses in traditional online analytics tools…easy access to actionable data, easy methods of implementation and lower cost point solutions that are meant to answer specific questions. I don’t think either solution eliminates the need for an online analytics tool, but I do think these solutions when used in tandem with free tools like Google Analytics and Yahoo Analytics will further call in to question the relevancy of fee based solutions for complete and comprehensive web channel data analysis.

WebTrends: A Busy Summer for Analytics

Summertime may be the time for blockbuster movie releases, but I don’t usually associate summer with blockbuster releases among web analytics vendors. WebTrends, with its Analytics 9 release in early August, sought to change all of that. WebTrends is having quite a busy summer, also acquiring a small multivariate testing firm called Widemile at the end of July.

The Analytics 9 release is quite an intriguing package and upon first look at all of its features there is definitely a “wow” factor…both because the interface and analysis functions are cool in of themselves, but a vast improvement on the “traditional” WebTrends interface.  The general thrust of the release is geared to making it easy for your report users to access reports more easily and analyze the data more quickly. Does WebTrends succeed?

The new Insight report profile report summary and drill down is clearly presented to the user with both standard and custom reports available. Rather than split up reports into a vendor-centric hierarchy (a frustrating norm from all vendors since the beginning of web analytics), the reports are presented in alphabetical order.  A search function is also available to quickly find a specific report.  However, you must enter the specific name of the report, as it is not a fuzzy search. On the plus side, the search form does fill in with possible reports based on your entry.

A “story” feature is available for all standard (not custom) reports. This is a great little feature that spits out a descriptive analysis of the report that’s been run. For example, instead of you needing to write about the top level numbers and trends, the story feature populates the analysis template with the numbers in all of the right places. I laughed when I first saw this because I could completely relate to having to spend time on writing these rather obvious analyses that are both labor intensive and tedious…but often necessary when sending reports along to stakeholders.  There is a bit of a downside, in that you cannot customize the canned analyses.

If you are using RSS for news, press releases, blogs and so forth, you can insert the RSS URL into a report, and see on what dates stories were going out on the RSS. All you need to do is a cut and paste of the URL into the RSS Overlay field and you’re good to go.

The other aspect of this release that is quite exciting is the use of the REST API to create automated Excel reports. Readers of the CMS Watch Web Analytics Report, and more sophisticated users of WebTrends know that automated Excel reporting (a la Omniture’s Excel client) has always been a weak point. The new REST APIs make this pain a thing of the past…for the most part. As long as you’re using Excel 2007, all you need to do is copy the http link generated by the report in WebTrends and paste it into the “From Web” field under the Data tab to get the report.  The good news is that you can generate the same report as often as you’d like…daily, weekly, monthly and so on, and the http link will be the same, so you can point to the same link. In addition, there is no limit to the number of rows available in the data export. The automation aspect...that is hands free update of the data into the Excel sheet… is not currently available. This means that you’ll need to do the data refresh manually. This is a bit of an inconvenience, but would not likely be too much to bear unless you’re doing quite a lot of automated Excel reporting.

Analytics 9 is a great step forward, but rather than being a standalone summer blockbuster it has to be viewed either as the first part of a multi-part serial or a preview of things to come. There are a few significant unfinished parts to this story:

What is to become of WebTrends’ custom report interface? This is not covered by the new release. If you need to develop advanced reports, such as those using filters or importing campaign and product IDs into reports, you need to use the “traditional” UI from release 8.5. Same goes for doing drill down reporting.

Other “cliffhanging” aspects in Analytics 9:

• The list of reports in Insight is pre-defined; the company indicates that you’ll be able to custom configure the list in the next release.
• There are two different log ins…one for Insight and one for the “traditional” UI, but there is on administrative control over setting permissions from one or the other.
• Insight does not work with Marketing Warehouse.

There is definitely a “work in progress” element to the WebTrends product right now…which feels both exciting and risky. Management stresses that it is now in a mode of rapid release, and that the product will be fully re-engineered over the next 6-9 months, with the next release coming out in October. According to the company, there have been 44 customers in beta since mid-June, and they are planning to use the feedback from this group to help shape the evolution of the new product.

I think it’s all a good thing, and I’m impressed by the progress the WebTrends team has made since Alex Yoder took over as the CEO a year ago. But for all of the advancements in Analytics 9, I have a question about what exactly and when exactly the core product will be completely re-engineered. It is not exactly clear what features will be addressed and when they’ll be addressed going forward. I think it would be helpful to have more definition around the product development roadmap.  Without this guidance from the company, I’m not exactly sure when the “new” product will be finished or available in entirety. If I were evaluating WebTrends, I’d ask my rep to be as clear about this as possible. Otherwise, I’d feel a bit like I’m guessing on how the product story is going to turn out. Might be fine for the movies, but in the case of a web analytics investment, I’d like to know how the story ends before I pay my money.

Definitely interested to hear your take on this...either here or at X Change Sept 9-11.

I'd love to see you in my Think Tank Sessions the day before XChange begins:

From Business Requirements to Tag Design to Tag

Managing Web Analytics on a Shoestring

 

Omniture's Biggest Competitor

I thought Omniture’s Q1 2009 earnings call a few weeks ago provided more insight into the company than past calls; perhaps the result of less than all positive news.

 The company’s posture in the past has been that it is building a moat around itself to fend off competition through the online marketing optimization suite it has been developing. The company continues to state that it doesn’t face real competition. Says Omniture CEO Josh James:

“Yes, from a competitive standpoint the biggest competitor we have announced is the macroeconomic environment. The other competitors that we have are more of a nuisance right now than anything; it's not something that really affects the relationship that we have with our customer. And most of the conversations around with our customers right now are just about the internal conflict that they have in their organizations, because they are having to cut people.”

Other quotes from Omniture that I found intriguing:

 ·         “…so it's not that we are seeing competitive pressure and people are migrating. It's more that they are losing resources in order to take advantage of that technology, and they are arbitrarily cutting cost across their organization.”

·         “…we are seeing some customer attrition at the lower end as smaller customers lose resources to manage the data…”

OK, so Omniture is losing some customers at the low end. But do you believe it’s because of staff cuts and that these customers can no longer get value from SiteCatalyst because there’s no one around to manage the tool?

I don’t think so.

The elephant in the room is Google Analytics. It is common practice for many organizations to run GA and cost-based tools in tandem and as there are cost pressures, there are smaller organizations moving to free solutions.  And, staff cuts or not, many organizations – large and small - are not getting full value from their web analytics solutions because they are not demonstrating the value of analytics to the business.  So, while smaller customers may be on the most likely list to migrate to a free solution, the challenge to make web analytics relevant in any organization poses a threat to Omniture’s strategy for up sell within its product suite.

However, Omniture is also facing competition on the high end as former HBX customers choose other solutions. There is a growing class of enterprises who are placing data integration high on their priority list and who want to control data locally. As a result Unica’s Affinium NetInsight and WebTrends are the solutions considered as on-premise alternatives.

The call featured some introspection that you should welcome if you’re an Omniture customer

·         “…we are going to focus on our customer base and product suite in place and defer some strategic investments and favor a predictable profitability metric until the environment improves and becomes more stable.”

·         “…we are getting some commentary from the customers right now that there are too many sales people on an account…”

Focusing on the customer base and having too many sales people…interesting concepts. How do you think this will play out?

Related Post:

Has Omniture Stalled?

Compare web analytics vendor compliance with the Web Analytics Association Analytics Definitions

As part of the research that went into the 2009 CMS Watch Web Analytics Report, I asked the vendors about their compliance with the WAA Web Analytics Definitions. If you'd like to see how the vendors stacked up you can download this for free, as well as read my post on the findings at:  http://www.cmswatch.com/Trends/1575-WAA-Standards-Compliance

I'd be interested in hearing from anyone to see how they've used the Definitions in their work...whether it be for vendor evaluation, stakeholder or partner education, or for other purposes.

WebTrends' New Approach to Web Analytics

Since Alex Yoder took over the reins as CEO at WebTrends in August, the company has been on an active campaign to make itself over…on both the image and product development fronts. Preaching a message of “openness” this has been manifest in hiring a new PR firm focused on consistent messaging and a senior management team that shows an interest in accessibility…both noticeable changes from the pre-Yoder days.

Things moved a bit more slowly on the product development front. While the openness vision has been articulated at industry conferences, such as eMetrics, it wasn’t exactly clear what this meant…other than that the Marketing Warehouse was the key to data access.  So, it was with great anticipation to see what the company was going to announce at Engage, its customer conference last week.  

Now that the smoke has cleared, let’s see what happened:

A Big Pre-Announcement

A New WebTrends Open Exchange – Yes, Open Exchange has been around since September 2007, but primarily as a partnership program. The revamped Open Exchange will provide API access that builds on its Tag Builder functionality. At first impression this is all a good thing: a fully published API should help extend data export to third party solutions; provide an alternative to the ODBC drive for exporting data into Excel and enable better access to both Analytics and Marketing Warehouse data. These last two points are significant because for years WebTrends has insisted that there are no issues with the ODBC driver even though many in the marketplace have expressed unhappiness with the product. On the second point, there seems to have been an overemphasis on developing additional reporting and querying capabilities for Marketing Warehouse at the expense of the core Analytics product.  

 Is there a catch? Well, the critical component of the web services is the Data Collection API, and this is available in beta only right now…general release for Analytics slated for June and for Marketing Warehouse in Q4 2009. Any beta users out there? I’d definitely like to hear about your experiences after you’ve used the APIs to see what you think.

Quick take: Big build up and pay off to be determined.

An Interesting Partnership

A Co-Branded Radian 6 Offering – Radian 6 is one of the new breed of analytics tools that monitors social media impact. WebTrends announced WebTrends Social Measurement Powered by Radian 6. The promise is that through Open Exchange, you’ll be able to integrate Radian 6 data with WebTrends Analytics. However, you’ll need to wait on this…probably at least another quarter for any integration. In the meantime, you can purchase the Social Measurement solution through WebTrends and for now; see basically the same reports as you would if you purchase Radian 6 directly.

Quick take: Big build up and pay off to be determined.

A Packaged Approach

A Solution-Oriented Vertical Offering – Throughout its history, WebTrends has lacked cohesiveness to its product and service offerings. Yes, it could do a lot, but it’s been difficult to figure out what part of the solution would fit your needs. The company is addressing this with eight vertical focused solutions. Nothing like the Coremetrics reporting or the Omniture playbook approaches, these service/solution offerings are presented as complete offerings that encompass strategic, technical and tactical components. Of course it will be curious how these complex engagements are estimated, planned, delivered and managed.

Quick take: Big build up and pay off to be determined.

So, You Tell Me…

As I mentioned, WebTrends is doing a lot these days to convey a new image. Management is easy to talk to and very forthcoming with information. They are doing a great job at reaching out to analysts, and you can sense a real energy…so different than years past. But I wonder what you’ve seen…in your demos with WebTrends, your experiences with tech support? Do you think the company has changed for the better? Is this management enthusiasm and sense of purpose evident in your day-to-day dealings with the company? Or is it pretty much the same old, same old?

The next few quarters should be telling as to whether Engage will be seen as the public turning point for the company, or nothing more than a pep rally for the company faithful.