Occam’s Razor by Avinash Kaushik - Five Ecosystem Challenges for Web Analytics Vendors [...]

My view is that #3 and #4 are the biggest challenges near term, trying to figure out how to tie all the data from multiple data sources (and best of breed vendors) as well as trying to glean actionable insight from what otherwise looks like terrabytes of statistics.

Looks like the “page view is dead” meme is back in vogue again.

Rob

Tonight we learn that Omniture SiteCatalyst Version 13 will appear tomorrow and be announced on Tuesday. Without pausing to try and figure out that sequence, let’s be happy that a new major release is here, and first think about what……

Die Freunde vom e-commerce-blog haben sich mal des Themas Implementierung von Google-Analytics angenommen und stellen zu Recht fest:

Das Tracking von Marketingaktivitäten gehört zu einer der wichtigsten Aufgaben im e-Commerce.

Zu widerlegen ve…

http://www.marketing-blog.biz/blog/archives/570-Bloggers-Digest-IX-Webanalysen-fuer-kleine-und-etwas-groessere-Budgets.html

What do I think it can be? Going out on a limb: I think the whole idea of clickstream is going to die, there will be no more clickstream. We are migrating to “business activity” on the web and there will be “business events” that occur and outcomes as a result of these events. In a world where pages don’t exist I think we will measure

1) the effectiveness of the sub-experiences as a whole and

2) deeply stress outcomes (qualitative or quantitative) and judge value of sub-experiences much harder on what the outcomes are (vs. today where it is so easy to get a count of page views that we report that rather than deeper outcomes impacting analysis)

It will be something better than what we have today or what we are proposing today: just newer ways of “stuffing events” into where page name or url should be.

What do you think?

Thanks so much for the comment, it put some heat on the brain cells! : )

Apparently, Robin Steif also got a call from an investment banker quite recently.
Funny thing is that everybody’s talking about the vendors and surely, Omniture did their IPO but why is no one talking about Mergers & Acquisitions and ZAAZ being acquired by Wunderman? I posted a (terribly) long post related to that on my own blog.

Getting back to your wonderful post that sums things up quite efficiently, I’ve decided to reply from Copenhagen, where Instadia indeed seems to get it ;-) The OX2 Web Analytics Business Unit is testing out the above mentioned survey features as we speak and looking forward to datamining planned for tomorrow.

Not only do they get the quantitative aspect of web analytics that you regularly mention but they also adapted the pricing as it’s not page views based but domains based. Interesting Danes ;-)

Related to outsourcing or insourcing, for us, it’s all about integration: between the CMS, the AdServer, the emailing tool, the survey tool and then the datawarehouse, the BI and stuff like that.
So ASP is nice. Free ASP is even better with Google Analytics but I share your concern related to privacy but also security issues, cf. your previous post.

But then again, we all now that the road to Enlightment in web analytics is long. So ASP remains a good short term solution. Related to long roads, page centricity for me is not really an issue. If you’re using tagging and do it correctly, you can replace the notion of page views by the notion of page elements.

I hear them often those questions related to Web 2.0 but can’t help myself thinking that Web 1.0 measurement is not really part of the process for the majority of companies who have a web site so let’s try to be logical and make our classes with simple stats, in order to get the right questions first of all and then the right answers.

So many clients want it all but you know as well as I do that they don’t want to face the 10/90 rule as the responsability for Web Analytics is pushed too often into a corner or passed onto the new guy/gal.

Our European web analytics dedicated business unit has nonetheless recently seen a shift in focus: leaving the realm of licenses and maintenances to move over towards true consultancy. It can still be very technical but can also be used for interpretation of reports, allowing us to hold a more holistic view on the technical context but also the companies’ underlying communication strategy. As much as I hate the term consultant, we’re actually being categorised as such, lately.

This is the time where the fun starts ;-) and I must admit that it’s also thanks to you that this sector is moving on, slowly but surely.

Regards from the Brussels team, this time in Copenhagen. Next week, Paris ;-) I love Europe!
Aurélie

Great list. On “#2 Reliance on ‘page centricity’”, can you point to me what are the proposed alternatives and guidelines?

If it is a case-by-case situation, I would imagine it would very difficult assess what is to track (not that its always easy now). And of course, a new consulting opportunity.

Thanks!

- Daniel

Great post as always. On the issue of whether the big boys will be able to monetize the 90%, IMHO the existing vendors will have a hard time moving a different business model that reflects their customer’s needs - e.g. services. Many of the big boys are either public or planning to go public… The valuation associated with a product company is (sometimes significantly!) higher than that associated with a services company and therefore this creates an “innovator dilemma” - a great concept introduced by Clayton Christensen…. and opportunities for new entrants!

All the best,
Antony Awaida

On the issue of cutting “your analytics costs by five or ten or twenty times”, most of my company’s expenses are in people and training rather than the cost of the tool.

I agree with this completely. The trend that I have noticed is that for larger websites the cost of tool in the ASP model is also becoming non-trivial. My reference to five or ten times was simply on the ASP cost for the tool itself.

GA is an excellent tool and many companies should use it, but I suspect there are also many companies that would find a different tool a better fit.

I could not agree more with this statement. Each company will find its own sweet spot and there are tools that are better suited for certain vertical industries (CoreMetrics comes to mind).

My hypothesis is (and please let me know what you think of it) that there is a threshold beyond with you’ll be able to extract value from a top line tool. Until you reach that threshold you could benefit just as much from a free/cheap tool like my biased favourite ClickTracks. The benefit is you’ll more more money to invest in people and training etc.

Stéphane:

Here I would tend to disagree with Avinash. Bringing web analytics hosting in-house might seem an interesting venue for cost saving, but budgetary expenses being what they are, it’s not obvious to compare a capital investment (hardware and software) and ongoing service-based yearly expenses.

You make a great point, especially in highlighting the trend moving away from in-house to all hosted, like in Live or Google Apps.

My thought is that the pressure to bring in-house will come

1) primarily from Privacy considerations (data security and providing a illusion of extra data security)

2) secondarily from not wanting to have another Data Silo (outside the company when the real value will come from integrating web analytics with rest of the company, it is non-trivial challenge today to get data from outside and bring it in and DW it etc)

3) cost of having it in-house, there is general over estimation of how much incremental cost there will be for a decent size company (say Fortune 5000) to have a extra four cpu server with a redundant back-up to collect data

Thanks to both of you for making some excellent points, I appreciate the comments very much.

5. Privacy: basically, 3rd party cookie is dead, 1st party is fine, but more work toward privacy is required. Can’t agree more!

4. Demand for multiple solution options: hosted vs in-house, the never ending debate. Here I would tend to disagree with Avinash. Bringing web analytics hosting in-house might seem an interesting venue for cost saving, but budgetary expenses being what they are, it’s not obvious to compare a capital investment (hardware and software) and ongoing service-based yearly expenses. Furthermore, there is a strong push toward outsourcing whatever is perceived as a commodity and use it as a service, the Microsoft Live and Google Apps are two indications of a strong move toward this direction. In the case of web analytics, hosting and data crunching is the commodity, timely presentation of quality results is the real value. If web analytics vendors starts Applying Web 2.0 concepts, we might see interesting possibilities emerge (want your dashboard in Google Personalized Home? build your own interface using YUI (Yahoo! UI Library), mash up your data with other Web 2.0 services? Fine!

3. Web Analytics is not enough: If there is an opportunity for web analytics vendors to extend their offering, I think it will be by offering new complimentary services. We have already seen most of the web analytics vendors offering at least some degree of SEO and PPC tools. I think we need to look for other services such as polls, surveys, competitive/market analysis, etc. Ease of merging with internal business data will also become crucial, when we say “web analytics is not enough”, I would push for seamless and easier “analytics” in general. The platform for web analytics could become a data repository for the analysis and visualization of any type of data, not just web related.

2. Reliance on page centricity: this item is getting a lot of attention. Rich Flash interfaces and even more, Web 2.0 types of applications require a different unit of measure. The WAA definition of a “page view” is of interest (”an analyst-definable unit of content requested by a visitor”), but to me, what seem even more interesting is the concept of a “Meaningful Interactive Event”.

1. The 10/90 rule: Again, I agree with Avinash. The tool is part of the equation, but it’s not and end in itself. At the end of the day, you still need a human being able to understand, analyze and do recommandation on actionable data. In some cases, the lower-entry level solutions are what makes the most sense, but I think there is plenty of room for the “bigger” players, and I hope it’s more than 5%!

Great post Avinash, it’s always a pleasure to read you!

S.Hamel - http://shamel.blogspot.com

I agree, web analytics is not enough. I find our WA tool becoming the platform for integrating emarketing inputs and outcomes. Whether it is email campaigns, direct mail campaigns, ad campaigns, ppc, or surveys, WA provides a mechanism to view results across all media, while providing segmentation data for analysis.

Jim