“You
Can't Manage What You Don't Measure” is an old adage most of us may have come
across. Senior level executives and managers always ask for right data to make management
decisions. Right data is hard to find, but fortunately in today’s e-commerce
world, web analytic tools are making life easy to find the right kind of data.
The next challenge would be to choose the right kind of web analytic tool,
which would give a good return on investment to make great decisions based on the
right data at the right time.
A
lot of information is available on the internet on how to buy the best tool to
perform web analysis. We have websites like About Analytics and Ideal Observer which can determine which particular tool
would be better for a particular application. In general Abobe Site catalyst and
Google Analytics lead the pack for enterprise and medium retail businesses
respectively.
Google Analytics continues to gain new
customers because it is free and is very easy to implement and has a good
functionality. Many companies do not require any more functionality than what
Google Analytics offers and should get the job done. However some companies
require extra integration, data control, ad-hoc reporting or unique visitor
tracking that Webtrends or Site Catalyst can offer. Google Analytics is free
but often requires more professional service to accomplish the same analysis
that which can also be performed with SiteCatalyst (Adobe Product) and
Webtrends. It reminds me of the famous saying “You get what you pay for!“.
In this regard, Omniture (now currently
Adobe) really was in a way very disruptive in the field of web analytics and it
left Webtrends, which once (before 2005) led the market, behind and is still
catching up to Abode. Abode offers great underlying architecture and reports
that greatly integrate with the user interface (UI). I have not had the
pleasure of using the Site catalyst personally yet but a fellow student, an
analyst showed me its UI, which looked very advanced (with 3D mapping etc)
compared to Google Analytics with which I have some familiarity.
When comparing product functionality,
checklists offer the most visual differentiation. Some companies have created
almost 500 criteria to compare tools and some companies have considered very
few aspects when comparing tools before they a make a decision to buy one.
Web Analytics is not all about data collection
and different analysis tools and application, but also about human resources
available to use the tools and analyze the data. An efficient Return on
Investment (ROI) will be, if one budgets 20% on tool and 80% on human
resources. In other words, a cheap tool and a really experienced powerful
analyst will result in greater ROI than a powerful tool and a not so great an analyst.
Ultimately, we want to use web
analytics tool to optimize web sites to ensure that they deliver value, and we
make necessary site changes as we learn about deficiencies through our
analysis. But that brings many other tools into the equation such as data
warehousing, A/B testing tools, campaign management and so on. Consequently, one
has to consider how well these three tools play with other vendors and how
complete and integrated their offerings would be when considering the entire
infrastructure.
In the end, the tool selected should be
able to streamline one’s core business data to be efficiently managed based on
how the customer is going to use your website. Best of Luck on choosing the
right one!
References:
(1)http://jfbelisle.com/wpcontent/uploads/2013/01/web_analytics_solutions_market_share.png
(2)http://scalabilityproject.com/answering-what-is-roi-with-analytics/
(3)http://semphonic.blogs.com/semangel/2012/05/webanalytics-tools-comparison-websites.html
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