There are multiple solutions when trying to analyze a web site and it is not always easy to find the one which will fit your needs perfectly. In order to help find the way through it all, I’ll try to describe the possible options the best I can.
Please let me know if I’m missing a solution or provider you think should be listed, so I can check it out and add it.
The VIPs
If performance, innovation and support are the main priorities when selecting our solution for web analytics we should refer to the Forrester Research report. The last update dates from the 3rd quarter of 2009 an it compares the most relevant vendors at the moment. The next graphic shows the final clasification where Omniture, Unica and Coremetrics achive the best ranking positions.
Omniture: an Adobe company, Site Catalyst stands out for its core data handling, reporting, and analysis capabilities. Although it is comparatively high pricing, it has a big market presence, with clients like eBay or Microsoft.
Coremetrics: Small in total client count, but it offers oversized capabilities like its ability to handle data efficiently, customize reporting and analysis, and integratation with multiple marketing functions (cm tags).
Unica: The NetInsight offering is one of the most flexible and customizable offerings that the Forrester report evaluated due to an open relational database.
Although the Forrester report is based on the version 7.6, the last one at the moment is 8.0 which has improved features at reporting and ad hoc analysis.
Webtrends: After restructuring its management team and refocused its efforts in web analytics the company scored high marks because of its ability to create unlimited custom and calculated metrics, as well as the capacity to perform unlimited correlations.
Nedstat: With a strong presence on the European market. The variables/metrics customization to meet the client needs is one of the company’s strengths.
Other good choices
If you want to minimize expenses on technology in favor of dedicating resources to in-house expertise take a look at these solutions:
Google Analytics: Considered the most powerful free application. It provides a wealth of statistics and it's tie in with Adwords. Google Analytics uses page tagging to report the data so it's not necesary to deal with hosting your own log files, but the downside is that the data is 12 hours behind, which is not suitable for everyone.
AT Internet: This company, primarily focused on Europe, provides a free solution called XiTi, yet the vendor augments that solution with a fee-based offering. It offers real-time data processing, strong segmentation, and some customization capabilities for its clients.
Yahoo! Web Analytics: Since the acquisition of the IndexTools Web analytics solution in 2008, it is free for use by Yahoo! small business merchants and all clients that are supported by a Yahoo! account team. This limited distribution strategy makes the tool somewhat exclusive but provides the opportunity for Yahoo! Web Analytics to focus on the core needs of its immediate client base.
New analytics for the new ways of communication.
Web 2.0 applications are discovering new ways to analyze a web site efectively besides the use of log files and page tagging.
Final users can also guide us to analyze some situations if for instance we create a test laboratory with clients, generate our own QA forms or by using online surveys. There are free ones such as 4Q or tusencuestas. This kind of customer driven optimization can tell us whether the users are finding their way on the website or not.
There is another measurement system, very used in communication companies (it was inherited from the TV) which is to install in a group of user's systems a data recovery software that will provide with statistics to analyze the site audience. The better known panels are Nielsen (NetView) and Comscore (Media Metrix)
There are also tools that let us compare our website with other ones based on estimated audience data which can help us to get an idea of how are we doing. Examples of this as a free application Alexa whereas fee-based Compete.
It's possible to analyze a blog like this by using the Google Analytics page tag and use a social media search engine to search what is being said about us in blogs, comments, bookmarks, events, news and videos with socialmention.
The Google solution Feedburner provides custom RSS feeds, traffic analysis and an optional advertising system to bloggers, podcasters, and other web-based content publishers.
For a Twitter profile we can use some tool such as twittercounter,
Facebook lets us use Allfacebook to analyze pages with more followers, and statistics about applications used or Socialistics where you can, for example, see the political views or religious beliefs of the people in your network, get stats for friends of your friends (extended network) or see all of your friends' images in a big picture wall.
With Youtube we can use the own application to check if the videos are reaching their audience.
In case that our concern goes to the frequency of a Google search, Google Trends will help us to know better our users preferences, the why and how they reach our website and the reasons of them not choosing us.
Related to this, there are tools like Google Insights for Search that help us with Search Engine Optimization by comparing search volume patterns across specific regions, categories, time frames and properties.
And last but not least, there are applications that let us test different versions of the same page to understand what the site visitor wants and increase conversions. On the free side we have Google Website Optimizer but if we need a more sophisticated solution lets chose Optimost or the Omniture bet Test&Target.
Although these are the most important solutions, I was amazed to see that there are many more in the market right now. Have a look at this link to check them out.
Related Documents
The Forrester Wave™: Web Analytics, Q3 2009
Omniture, Coremetrics, Unica, And Webtrends Lead, With Nedstat Close
by John Lovett
Cuadernos de comunicación Evoca
Herramientas para la correcta utilización de la Analítica Web
by Gemma Muñoz
