Wisdom of the WA Crowd Experiment Results
The results are in! Thanks to everyone who participated in the experiment.
After processing the answers to remove some slightly skewed values (those out of the range average ± 1.5 x standard deviation were removed) the results are shown on the figure and on the following table:
| How strong is Vendors’ Current Offering? | How strong is Vendors’ Strategy? | How strong is Vendors’ Market Presence? | |
| OMNITURE | 4.23 | 4.26 | 4.15 |
| WEBTRENDS | 3.36 | 3.25 | 3.55 |
| COREMETRICS | 3.55 | 3.21 | 2.69 |
| GOOGLE ANALYTICS | 3.59 | 4.00 | 4.77 |
| YAHOO! ANALYTICS | 3.45 | 3.24 | 2.11 |
My interpretation of the results:
- On average Omniture occupies 1st place both in Current Features Offering and overall Strategy in the WA professionals mindset.
- Google Analytics is recognized to have the strongest Market Presence and also a strong strategy, 2nd to Omniture.
- Coremetrics, Webtrend and Yahoo! Analytics are perceived to have a weaker Strategy and Market Presence than the other two vendors.
- I think this last point contributes to Google Analytics’ Current Features Offering been perceived as strong as the one from paid/former paid vendors Coremetrics, Webtrends and Yahoo! Analytics.
- Omniture has grown its market presence with the acquisition of HBX/VisualSciences outperforming Webtrends and Coremetrics.
What makes Omniture and Google Analytics leaders?
- A clear strategy and value proposition. For Omniture is its 1-stop shopping approach through a synergic suit of products and for Google Analytics its best free web analytics tool and straight forward approach to WA.
- An orchestrated and continous media presence gaining top-of-mind in both analysts and decision makers. For Omniture through acquisitions and partnerships that cloud the days of its competitors. In the case of Google Analytics its perfect timing of features releases, a ubiquitous presence on the blogosphere and a mediatic and charming Avinash Kaushnik do the trick.
What shall we expect from Coremetrics, Webtrends and Yahoo! Analytics in the next 12 months?
Hi Andrés:
I agree with your interpretation on the results.
However, I coudn’t avoid asking myself: how many time Omniture will remain as the market leader?
Since I have a very unpleasant experience with SiteCatalyst because of many several issues and bugs on their plattform (i.e. missing data, reports broken, EDS didn’t work, etc.) I truly believe that it is hard to convince managers to pay for it.
Besides, since GA V3.0 was launched the gap on reports capabilities with regards Omniture was strongly reduced, and many companies started to see as a real alternative.
What do you think?
Justo
25 Feb 09 at 1:23 am
Justo,
In my experience it’s not necessarily about the bugs and other data/user experience related issues, all vendors suffer them at some point.
Even more, although it’s worst to suffer them when you’re using a paid solution and you have and SLA, the key point to this problems is that you miss the porpoise of Web Analytics- the ability to analyze and interpret data to favor your business timely- and not whether your paying for the tool or not.
Additionally some of the companies that have chosen to use free tools have actually invested on customizations, installation and/or training so this option isn’t really “gratis”.
In this sense I truly believe vendors that keep a high uptime, quality product and low bug occurrence but at the same time are upfront and honest in their communication of issues will be valued.
Regarding Omniture’s leading position, the market will speak…
Several years ago Webtrends was holding the N° 1 tag, 2 years ago it was really close between Coremetrics and Omniture.
There are actually world regions were Omniture is not the most popular paid tool (I’m thinking Australia/New Zealand, where Nielsen and BlueFreeway are quite popular or some countries in LatinAmerica where Certifica is strong, not considering GA which probably is everywhere).
Also there are other vendors to keep track.
* I really like what Unica has been doing.
* Lyris, bought Clicktracks and has a very interesting product suite.
* Webtrends still has a legacy customer base and has given signs of rebirth in the last month with a new product launch.
In sum, Web Analylitics Industry is getting more interesting by the minute.
Andrés
25 Feb 09 at 8:39 am
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El cuadrante WA de Andrés Flores « La compreria
25 Feb 09 at 8:17 pm
Hi Andrés,
Thanks for your thoughts and your experiment, great the wisdom of crowds
.
But i think the results shown the position of each mark in the mind of the customer (webanalytics practitioners). Following the Al Ries and J. Trout concept of positioning: Google Analytics is the free webanalytics tools, Omniture is the best paid webanalytis tols and maybe Unica is became the best 360º (marketing mix) webnalytics tools. This explain the practitioners first dimension about webanalytics tools (free-paid) and who win the race to the top of mind.
What do you think? what could be the next dimension to the next great webanalytics tool that segmented the market?
Manuel
26 Feb 09 at 1:44 am
Andrés,
I was also going to ask you about Unica, as it is surging as the new contender. I also notice they have a more aggressive marketing campaign, sponsoring events and reaching to the web analytics community.
I had a chance to look at a demo and presentation recently and the tools seems pretty impressive, with high flexibility, open architecture and features that seems to be inspired in key learnings from the market and their competitors weaknesses.
Going back to you experiment, a dimension that would be interesting to use when comparing web analytics tools would be the actual business value delivered for different solutions or investment. At least to have an idea of different “configurations” or “reference implementations” and include the range of price or cost of ownership in the model, even if is just a relative reference.
There is also the fact that comparing web analytics tools can be very subjective. Each organization has different needs, a lot of companies never use all the features they are paying for and most of the time the advanced features, that place a particular solution with a strong position in the market, will fall out of your budget anyways.
Jose Davila
11 Mar 09 at 11:30 pm
Hi Manuel and Jose,
I couldn’t write a short answer to your comments so I decided to make a post:
http://www.webanalytics.cl/03/2009/web-analytics-vendors-evolution/
Manuel, you are trying to get me into trouble with this prediction business…
What the next value proposition will be?
I have a couple of ideas but at the same time think the wave Omniture and Unica are leading is quite strong and would keep dragging customers and vendors for some time making hard to predict a shift and the circumstances of that change.
Cheers, Andrés
Andrés
14 Mar 09 at 1:31 am