{"id":294,"date":"2007-08-27T00:36:27","date_gmt":"2007-08-27T07:36:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.kaushik.net\/avinash\/web-analytics-vendor-tools-comparison-and-one-challenge\/"},"modified":"2026-05-19T15:33:12","modified_gmt":"2026-05-19T22:33:12","slug":"web-analytics-vendor-tools-comparison-and-one-challenge","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kaushik.net\/avinash\/web-analytics-vendor-tools-comparison-and-one-challenge\/","title":{"rendered":"Web Analytics Vendor Tools Comparison (And One Challenge)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" height=\"113\" alt=\"outstanding\" hspace=\"7\" src=\"https:\/\/www.kaushik.net\/avinash\/wp-content\/uploads\/2007\/08\/outstanding.jpg\" width=\"150\" align=\"left\" \/>Picking the right web analytics tool \/ vendor is perhaps one of the most critical decisions you&#8217;ll make. Given the general struggle by all Practitioners in the ecosystem it is apparent that many end up making a less than optimal decision.<\/p>\n<p>There are lots of different web analytics vendors comparison reports \/ blog posts \/ analyst reviews \/ hidden, or not so hidden, agenda pieces.<\/p>\n<p>\n[sidebar] [update]<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\nHere are a couple of blog posts you might find to be of value, as you are trying to decide which web analytics vendor to pick for your company.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<p>\n<a href=\"https:\/\/www.kaushik.net\/avinash\/2006\/09\/how-to-choose-a-web-analytics-tool-a-radical-alternative.html\">How to Choose a Web Analytics Tool: A Radical Alternative<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\n<a href=\"https:\/\/www.kaushik.net\/avinash\/2007\/01\/web-analytics-tool-selection-10-questions-to-ask-vendors.html\">Web Analytics Tool Selection: 10 Questions to ask Vendors<\/a> <\/p>\n<p>\n<a href=\"https:\/\/www.kaushik.net\/avinash\/2007\/01\/web-analytics-tool-selection-three-questions-to-ask-yourself.html\">Web Analytics Tool Selection: Three Questions to ask Yourself<\/a><br \/>\n<P> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.kaushik.net\/avinash\/2007\/10\/negotiating-a-web-analytics-vendor-contract-check-slas.html\">Negotiating A Web Analytics Vendor Contract? Check SLA&#8217;s<\/a><\/p>\n<\/ul>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>\n[\/sidebar] [\/update]<\/p>\n<p>When Eric requested me to be on the panel at the Search Engine Strategies conference in San Jose it provided a interesting opportunity for me to think about the web analytics industry. You see the talk was part of the track: Analyzing The Analytics Players.<\/p>\n<p>Creating any presentation is part labor of love and part scary adventure, this one was a bit more of the latter due to the many hats that I wear. Author, Blogger, Founder, Analytics Evangelist.<\/p>\n<p>In the end it was both a huge challenge to evaluate each web analytics vendor and a lot of fun to see if I could do it in a way that was very different.<\/p>\n<p>My chosen methodology was to strip away all the marketing spin and micro-nuanced pages and pages of complexity &#8211; where everyone ends up having every feature &#8211; if only after paying enough or implementing &#8220;special&#8221; code (while standing on your hands and making a omelette and solving the Iraq problem all at the same time).<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.kaushik.net\/avinash\/wp-content\/uploads\/2007\/08\/colbert-soundbites-complexmadesimple.png\"><img fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" height=\"335\" alt=\"colbert-soundbites - complex made simple\" hspace=\"7\" src=\"https:\/\/www.kaushik.net\/avinash\/wp-content\/uploads\/2007\/08\/colbert-soundbites-complexmadesimple.png\" width=\"469\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>I call it the soundbite methodology. Take away everything so that you are just left with the essence. Two sentences that try to do justice by capturing the most essential thought.<\/p>\n<p>The result, I think, is a interesting presentation that, I think, you&#8217;ll find to be of value, regardless of how long you&#8217;ve been in the field and regardless of which vendor you like or work with. In this post I want to share that presentation with you in a screencast format.<\/p>\n<p><u>Here is what the video contains:<\/u><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Brief <strong>introduction<\/strong> to the talk &amp; yours truly.<\/li>\n<p><P><\/p>\n<li>Overview of how <strong>clickstream data<\/strong> is collected.<\/li>\n<p><P><\/p>\n<li><strong>One big problem<\/strong> (and three challenges) that are driving vendors in new directions.<\/li>\n<p><P><\/p>\n<li><strong>Comparison of web analytics vendors<\/strong> \/ tools (Omniture, WebTrends, CoreMetrics, WebSideStory \/ Visual Sciences, Indextools, Unica, ClickTracks, Google Analytics &amp; Microsoft).<\/li>\n<p><P><\/p>\n<li>Parting thoughts: <strong>a call to action<\/strong>, standards rock.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><u>And here are some caveats:<\/u><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Running time is 47 mins 44 seconds.<\/li>\n<p><P><\/p>\n<li>If from the tone of my voice it sounds like I made the video in one sitting in the middle of the night then it is true. :) 0127 hrs to be precise, I am sure you&#8217;ll forgive the lack of quality production.<\/li>\n<p><P><\/p>\n<li>You might not agree with some, or all, of it. I request you to give it a listen and you know where to find the feedback\/comments form. :)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Here is the first version of the video, a high resolution version.<\/p>\n<p><center><\/p>\n<table CELLPADDING=5>\n<tr>\n<td valign=\"center\" align=\"middle\" bgcolor=\"silver\">\n[swf]2007\/08\/web_analytics_vendors_challenges_comparison.swf[\/swf]\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n<p><\/center><\/p>\n<p>\nYou can play \/ pause using the controls. To skip forward simply click on the long strip you see after the stop button.<\/p>\n<p>Here is the second version from <a href=\"https:\/\/video.google.com\/videoplay?docid=5216119977174921587\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Google Video<\/a>. You know what to do with this one (although because of quality I do encourage you to give the above version a try):<\/p>\n<p><center><embed id=\"VideoPlayback\" style=\"WIDTH: 400px; HEIGHT: 326px\" src=\"https:\/\/video.google.com\/googleplayer.swf?docid=5216119977174921587\" type=\"application\/x-shockwave-flash\" \/><\/center><\/p>\n<p><P>If you want to <strong>download the video<\/strong> visit the <a href=\"https:\/\/video.google.com\/videoplay?docid=5216119977174921587\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Google Video site<\/a> and you&#8217;ll find a handy download button there.<\/p>\n<p><P>If you would like to <strong>embed the video<\/strong> on your website \/ blog then visit the <a href=\"https:\/\/video.google.com\/videoplay?docid=5216119977174921587\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Google Video site<\/a> and click the blue &#8220;Email &#8211; Blog &#8211; Post to MySpace&#8221; button and then click on the &#8220;Embed HTML&#8221; link. Copy \/ paste the code into any html document and you are in business.<\/p>\n<p>I would very much love to have your feedback on any aspect of it (production quality, value of the content, positions taken, what&#8217;s there, what&#8217;s not there&#8230;.).<\/p>\n<p>What do you all think? Please share your perspectives, critique, brickbats via comments.<\/p>\n<p><em>[Like this post? For more posts like this please <a href=\"https:\/\/www.kaushik.net\/avinash\/all-posts-site-map\/\">click here<\/a>, if it might be of interest please check out my book: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.snipurl.com\/wahour\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Web Analytics: An Hour A Day<\/a>.]<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Picking the right web analytics tool \/ vendor is perhaps one of the most critical decisions you&#8217;ll make. Given the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,2,6,14,8,9,12,10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-294","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-advanced-analytics","category-analytics","category-marketing-tips","category-search-engine-marketing","category-voice-of-customer","category-web-analytics","category-web-insights","category-web-metrics"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kaushik.net\/avinash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/294","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kaushik.net\/avinash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kaushik.net\/avinash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kaushik.net\/avinash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kaushik.net\/avinash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=294"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.kaushik.net\/avinash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/294\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10208,"href":"https:\/\/www.kaushik.net\/avinash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/294\/revisions\/10208"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kaushik.net\/avinash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=294"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kaushik.net\/avinash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=294"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kaushik.net\/avinash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=294"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}