webanalytics.cl

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:

My interpretation of the results:

1. On average Omniture occupies 1st place both in Current Features Offering and overall Strategy in the WA professionals mindset.
2. Google Analytics is recognized to have the strongest Market Presence and also a strong strategy, 2nd to Omniture.
3. Coremetrics, Webtrend and Yahoo! Analytics are perceived to have a weaker Strategy and Market Presence than the other two vendors.
4. 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.
5. Omniture has grown its market presence with the acquisition of HBX/VisualSciences outperforming Webtrends and Coremetrics.
   

What makes Omniture and Google Analytics leaders?

1. 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.
   
2. 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?

Last week there was a very active post and comment thread on Francois Derbaix’s blog (Francois is CEO of www.toprural.com). His post explained the difference he had found between the organic traffic measured  for toprural by XITI and Google Analytics. In just a few days 71 persons commented or linked to the post, some of them just tailgating on the “Google is Evil” theme.

He implied that Google used GA to give a wrong idea on the share of organic traffic over total visits and basically “scooped” the news that GA has a campaign tracking latency with a default value of 6 months. In my opinion Google has been pretty clear on what information is reported on the traffic sources and also regarding the configuration options to modify the campaign tracking latency. So basically, the web analyst using the tool is responsible for the configuration and knowing what GA is measuring and reporting.

To analyze the comments thread I marked each comment as either a trackback or a comment, then I reviewed and matched either the content of the comment or the post linking to the thread to one or more of the following themes:

1. Google is evil or/and Why GA lies to me?
2. Surprised and/or uninformed and/or thankful to know
3. Genuine concern and/or Request for advice/Acknowledge need of specialized support
4. Provide set-up advice and/or additional information
5. Watercooler or miscellaneous conversation and yadayadayada
   

After browsing the 123 comments and posts involved directly in the conversation till the 23/02/2009 I can highlight the following:

• 71 participants (including post author and guest-star  Avinash Kaushnik)
• 123 comments, 27 of them were trackbacks
• 1 every 3 participants was surprised to know Google Analytics track traffic sources in this way and the latency was 6 months
• Only 1 every 10 participants provide set-up advice, solutions or additional information to enrich the conversation
• 12 out of 71 participants at one point of the conversation wrote about the Google is evil theme
• And 6 out of the 27 posts linking the original post were about Google is evil!
• 21 out of 71 participants show genuine concern, requested advice or acknowledge the need for specialized support.

For me the biggest discovery was to learn that so many people use Google Analytics without bothering to learn about its configuration nor the data reported and how quick they place the shame on the tool once they realize they have been getting it wrong.  I’m thinking  “Eyes wide shut”.

A year ago Forrester Research Inc. published The Forrester Wave(tm): Web Analytics, Q3 2007 report which included a bubble chart depicting the Web Analytics vendor’s landscape.

The vertical axis represents the vendors Current Offering.  In a scale value of 0 (weak) to 5 (strong) accounting for the following factors:

• Data handling: How well does the vendor handle data?
• Reliability: How reliable is the vendor’s hosted/ASP platform?
• Metrics, dimensions and correlations: How robust is the product’s set of metrics, dimensions and correlations?
• Reporting and analysis: How robust is the platform’s support for reporting and analysis?
• Integration: How well does the product integrate with the client’s technology ecosystem?
• Usability : How well does the product conform to software usability best practices?
• Service and support: How robust are the vendor’s service and support offering?

 
The horizontal axis represents the vendors Strategy in a scale value of 0 (weak) to 5 (strong) accounting the following factors:

• Product direction: How strong is the vendor’s product strategy?
• Commitment: How many employees does the vendor have dedicated to this product?
• Reference client strength: How strongly do reference clients endorse this vendor?

The size of the bubles represents the vendors Market Presence in a scale value of 0 (weak) to 5 (strong) accounting the following factors: 

• Installed base: How large is the vendor’s installed base of customers for this product?
• Industry presence: Does the vendor have a significant presence (15 or more enterprise-class clients in the following industries? (Banking & Financial services, Leisure & Travel, Entertainment, Retail and Publishers)
• International presence: How suitable is the vendor’s product for use worldwide?
  

I hope their 2008 Q3 report comes out soon! While I waited for it, inspired on James Surowiecki’s The Wisdom of Crowds, I set-up the following Experiment.

Why not pick up the brains of Web Analytics Demystified Forum members to build the same chart and afterwards compare it with Forrester’s Reserch updated report.

The experiment is over. See the results here.

It’s really simple

Could you value these 3 dimensions (Current Offering, Strategy and Market Presence) for the following vendors Omniture/HBX, Coremetrics, Webtrends, Google Analytics and Yahoo Analytics?

Answer based on your experience as a Web Analyst and WA market knowledge. Take the survey now

I bet you have heard about Marketing Mix 4Ps (Product, Price, Place & Promotion) or Entrepreneurship Funding 3 Fs (Family, Fools & Friends).

I thought it was about time Web Analytics got a marketing-like-named framework (so far we had Trinity). Here is something lighter you can use to explain your job, pitch a prospect and also as an initial analysis strategy.

Web Analytics’ 5Cs are, Campaigns, Content, Customers, Conversion and Competition.

Campaigns (/Traffic Sources)

• Which traffic sources are driving the most traffic to your site?
• Which traffic sources are driving quality traffic to your site?
• Which traffic sources are efficient (cost-revenue wise, ROI analysis)?
• What does a traffic source can tell me about that visit

Content (/Product Offer)

• Which contents are more popular?
• Which contents/products generate more revenue?
• Which contents are entry points to your site?
• Which of those contents have high bounce rates?
• Which content are driving organic traffic (through what keywords)?
• Which contents have high exit rates (any of those is part of a funnel, form or conversion process)?
• What features are working (insite search, tag clouds, dynamic content blocks)?

Customers (/Visitors)

• What is your rate of returning visitors?
• What % of your visits sees more than n page views per visit?
• What % of your visits stays more than t seconds per visit?
• How does the recency histogram fluctuate over time?
• What is the geographic origin of your visits?
• Can you segment them based on metadata available at login or based on behavior on your website (survey, forms and keywords)?

Conversion

• What traffic sources have higher conversion rates?
• Which contents have a higher impact on conversion (Google Analytics Money Index)?
• How does a conversion funnel perform?
• Are there any products with a better conversion rate? Is this general or specific for traffic sources, visitor segments or content paths?
• Can you identify visit segments with high conversion rates (low hanging fruit)?

Competition

• What is your competition doing (SEO, Adwords, Ads, offline)?
• What is your competition offering?
• What share of traffic is your competition getting (Hitwise, Compete, Google Trends)?
• Is your competition HOT (Buzz monitoring)?

This post is just a reference and I’m probably missing several ideas that could be added to this framework. If you have any they are welcome.

Have you ever wondered what the last column of your Top Contet reports showing $ Index stands for?

Well, this is a very short explanation!

If you have monetized your traffic within Google Analytics (either by assigning a value to a goal or by tracking ecommerce transactions with a value) you will see a $ index value that is calculated like this:

For each content:

Sum up the revenue that was generated after visiting that particular content and divide it by the total visits in which that content was viewed at least once.

So imagine yesterday you had only 2 visits that viewed the following content:

• Visit 1:   page 1 > page 2 > goal page > page 3
• Visit 2:    page 2 > page 3
  

Goal page has been assigned a value of $ 2. What is the $ index for each page (for yesterday)?

• $ index page  1 = $2 ($2 divided by 1)
• $ index page 2 = $1 ($2 divided by 2)
  
• $ index page 3 = $0 ($0 divided by 2)
  

As you can see the money index (especially for contents with a lot of unique views) can be understand as the expected revenue of a visit that sees that content. If we are able to increase traffic to these high $ index contents without dropping the figure will be increasing our overall site revenue.

Good treasure hunt!