Web Analytics 2011: The Tools in Review
The goal of Web Analytics is to help us see the “what” and ultimately better understand the “why” of the questions we all keep hearing: what’s the optimal path to conversion on my site; what does a visitor do when they enter, and why do they leave; amongst an array of other questions. Despite the readily apparent value of Web Analytics, it’s important to remember that it is still relatively new. The ever-evolving tools we use to measure online impact, made some significant advancements this year.
The Takeaway
2011 brought a slew of changes in this evolving field of analytics. The launches of Omniture SiteCatalyst v15, Google Analytics Premium and the WebTrends 10 were some of the major advances that led the way in tool upgrades. Adobe also launched “Adobe Tag Manager” while Coremetrics launched its “Digital Data Exchange”. We are at an inflection point with the tools and below we’ve reviewed the highlights of 2011.
Omniture SiteCatalyst v15
With its array of advancements in version 15, Omniture reinforces its position as one of the premier tools for Web Analytics. Amongst the key enhancements:
- On the fly segmentation –
- Previously, the only way to do instant segmentation was with Discover. Now Adobe has applied some of this functionality to the new SiteCatalyst upgrade
- Increased full subrelations –
- In older versions of SiteCatalyst, there were only a limited number of “slots” available for subrelations. With the upgrade, Omniture now allows any conversion report to be broken down by another
- Visits and visitors and page views on the majority of reports
- Unique visitors for custom timeframes
- SiteCatalyst previously reported on unique visitors based on calendar based timeframes, whereas it now allows you to get accurate reports of unique visitors based on custom timeframes
- New bounce rate methodology
- No longer will on entry page activity prior to an exit still lead to a bounce in reporting
Google Analytics Premium
The rumors of Google launching a paid version of their ever popular Google Analytics were true, and this year we got just that. With its flat fee approach, Google has made itself competitive in the field while still allowing its customers a bit of financial security in the event of an unexpected surge in traffic – since other paid tools charge based on traffic volume. The step up to premium comes with some features of its own:
- Guarantees pertaining to real-time and accurate data
- No restrictions around data collection and no data sampling with reporting:
- The free version of GA only collected data up to approximately 10 million hits per month, not ideal for large websites
- Up to 50 custom variables to track what’s important to you
- Dedicated customer/tech support
ROI Labs is looking forward to getting into the premium version and providing our full review on the platform.
WebTrends Analytics 10
WebTrends launched a few major updates in 2011 including:
- A brand new easy to use UI
- The ability to track performance across multiple channels:
- Instead of seeing data segregated by channel, look at your data grouped in a sensible fashion to understand how channels – such as mobile and social – interact with each other
- Advanced social and mobile tracking:
- Track mobile apps
- Easily track facebook and twitter including integration of bit.ly statistics
Adobe Tag Manager & IBM Coremetrics Digital Data Exchange Launches
Tag management tools are becoming more and more common in the growing online space. Changing something as simple a line of code on a specific set of pages can be a complicated, not to mention costly venture, in terms of both services and fallout from incorrect on page code changes. Both of these solutions help alleviate some of the stress associated with tag management. An added benefit of tag management solutions is data accuracy due the consistency and tag performance throughout the website. Both of these solutions offer benefits which become more and more significant the larger your website becomes:
- Centralized management of page tags
- Create and save “containers” based on existing Omniture/Coremetrics and third-party on page code
- Update content tags on the fly through without extensive downtime on your site
- Better manage the flow from testing of page tags to live deployment
Google Secure Search
Search plays an important role in understanding the online consumer. What do people want to find? How often are they searching for specific items? Recently, Google implemented its new secure search policy. Google secure search means that once a logged in Google user searches any term, Google encrypts the search term, essentially hiding it from your analytics tool in most cases. The major points to understanding the impact are:
- Google estimates this affecting less than 10% of search
- This only impacts Google based searches
- This won’t impact paid search
- This affects keyword term data
- Depending on the specific analytics package being used, this will be displayed differently
- Counts of referrals from Google search will not be impacted by secure search
Summary
2011 has been a busy year of tool development within the sphere of Web Analytics. With a partner like ROI Labs, that understands these changes and stays abreast of everything within our space, you can learn how to optimize your website and gain an advantage over your competition.
