Web analytics, two words that can create endless opportunities for your company. So, What is Web Analytics? In short, it is the study of the impact of a website on its users.

A great article was written by The Forrest Wave, titled Web Analytics, Q2 2014. In this article they talk about the importance of Web Analytics, who is the best web analytics vendor when it comes to Adobe, AT Internet, Google, IBM, SAS Institute, and Webtrends.

I understand that you are probably extremely busy and don’t have time to read a 15 page PDF. Well, it is in fact your lucky day. Because I am going to talk about the key takeaways from this article and my personal insights. So get ready to have your mind BLOWN.

When you want to measure your customer’s digital activity, you want to use web analytics. You may be asking yourself, well what does it measure exactly?

• Web analytics vendors have become very intelligent when it comes to collecting data from different digital touch-points i.e. social, mobile, rich media, etc. They collect all the data and then bring it all together. They also feature application programming interfaces (APIs). You may be asking yourself what are APIs, and why should I care about them? In short, APIs essentially let one application talk to another.
• These vendors provide insights to the business user community. This is great because you will be able to stay up-to-date on what is happening in the digital intelligence community.
• They support an intelligent, customer-based view of digital interactions. Each vendor varies in their capabilities. All of the vendors that Forrester Wave has analyzed have implemented unique visitor volume estimates in at least some of their reports, and most can entertain different levels of intelligence within cross-channel, cross-session funnels and visitor scenarios. The vendors that offer something extra special, are the ones that can recognize individual visitors and associate them with previously unrecognized interaction trails.
• Digital intelligence is right at the touch of your fingers. Vendors know that this something that companies want and need, but this is what differentiates them from one another. The best vendors support predictive analytics within their web analytics tools.

To figure out what vendor to go with, you need to known what your current and future digital intelligence needs are. The Forrester Wave decided to evaluate the six vendors under these three conditions.

1. Current offering: Evaluate each vendor on each characteristic of data handling; metrics, dimensions, and correlations; reporting and analysis; application usability and administration; integration; and service and support.
2. Strategy: Compared the product and corporate strategies of each vendor.
3. Market Presence: Evaluate each vendor’s financial strength, current clients, and employee base.

Aaaand the leaders are, Drum roll please.

1. Adobe
2. IBM
3. Webtrends
4. AT Internet
5. Google
6. SAS Institute

Adobe is the cream of the crop. Adobe has packaged web analytics into a broader digital analytics offering the largest number of enterprise web analytics clients. Adobe offers SiteCatalyst with Discover, Genesis, Data Warehouse, Report Builder, Dynamic Tag Management, and Insight into a premium offering. Adobe has invested a lot of energy into creating a powerful software option. If Adobe wants to maintain its front-runner position then they need to make the more advanced analytics more usable for business users.

IBM offers a more broad range of options that are marketing, commerce, and customer experience platforms. IBM supports cross-channel engagement tracking through all of IBM’s platforms. Since IBM acquired Coremetrics they have had the opportunity to strengthen digital analytics by continuing to build out core analytics and data collection capabilities, supporting stronger integration of behavioral analytics, eCommerce platforms, and the recently acquired Xtify mobile analytics solution. One thing that IBM should work on in the future is not forgetting about its original web analytics customers feeling left in the dust.

AT Internet is a new leader because they have been persistent into breaking into the European market and into high growth areas such as Russia, Latin America, and Southeast Asia.

Webtrends offers a product that introduces data through APIs and real-time data streams. One of the highest revenues, produces innovative products, customer support, and partnership ecosystem.

Google takes pride in its ease of use while delivering data as fast as possible. Before I read this article I always thought Google was the A1 steak sauce of Analytics. Being a strong performer is still a huge accomplishment.

SAS Institute has a strength in customer analytics, SAS offers something different for its current customer base. Out of all the vendors that were evaluated SAS Institute finished last. This does not mean that SAS does not offer anything great, they are still a contender, they just don’t compete with the likes of Adobe, IBM, and etc.

Since being intrigued by Google Analytics, I adventured over to the Analytics Academy and watched the videos that they have provided. One video in particular I thought was quite interesting. The video was called conversions and conversion attribution. The reason that I found this so interesting was because they talked about something called last-click attribution which is actually the most common type of attribution. “Last-Click” means that whatever the consumer pressed on to lead to that ending transaction, gets the credit. During high school I played soccer competitively for Emerald City Football Club and Seattle United. I would play center-midfield, and I would often pass a beautiful ball to someone and then they would pass to the forward, and then the forward would score. The two people who would receive credit was the person who got the assist (not even that sometimes!), and the person who scored the goal. In result, I wouldn’t receive credit for my beautiful pass even though I was a major attribute to that play. Justin Cutroni, Google Analytics Evangelist said during the video, “That’s why it is important to understand the value of each channel, you need to know which role it has played in your customer’s journey to conversion”. If you are able to break down the exact route that let to that transaction, you are able to figure out what channels are the most useful.

So what it really comes down to is what are your goals for your company? Hopefully by viewing this blog you will have more of an understanding of web analytics, as well as the vendors that offer the best web analytics.

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