Even more Web Analytics Dashboards Fun in Excel 2007!

Attention Internet Explorer users (MSIE)! When clicking on the link to download the .xlsx template, MSIE wrongly try to save it as a .zip file, which it's not. Make sure to rename the file with the proper .xlsx extension (or better yet, switch to Firefox!)

A couple of weeks ago I published "Web Analytics Dashboards: fun with Excel 2007", it got on Stumbled  and became one of the most visited article. A while back I also published Box plots and whisker plots in Excel 2007 and it consistently receives a lot of views.

So here's an update of Web Analytics Dashboard Fun with Excel 2007!

What is it?

I'm glad to release "Web Analytics Dashboard Fun" (Microsoft Excel 2007, 85KB .xlsx), a free Microsoft Excel 2007 template for web analytics professionals. It can be used for learning web analytics, Excel in general or as the basis for more elaborate dashboards. The goal is to use only Excel 2007 features and ease customization of the template and update of the data.

Why Excel?

As a teacher of web analytics and a web analyst myself, I noticed people often struggle to define KPIs and get going with dashboards. My clients use different web analytics tools, be it Omniture, Google Analytics, Coremetrics, WebTrends, Xiti or others. Although some of the tools offer very advanced dashboarding and analysis capabilities, there are a number of reasons why you would want to use Excel:

• Control the information being distributed
• Publish the information in a format people are used to (either Excel or PDF)
  
• Avoid granting access to the web analytics tool itself
  
• Include other sources of data
  
• Ease "month to month" and "year to year" analysis
• Ease analysis of major segments (such as two countries, two sites, etc.)
  
• Include the analyst comments and evaluation

Get Web Analytics Dashbaord Fun!

Based on the feedback I got, and some further tweaking to make the dashboard more generic and easier to modify for your needs, I'm releasing "Web Analytics Dashboard Fun with Excel 2007 v1.1". To get started there are just a few steps:

1. >>> Get the template <<< (Microsoft Excel 2007, 85KB .xlsx)
2. Right-click on the S1 and S2 radio button and "Edit Text" to your licking
   
3. Change "Success Event 1" through "Success Event 3" in all worksheets
4. Update the data in WebDataS1 and WebDataS2
5. Voilà!

Once you are comfortable with the spreadsheet, you can modify the dashboard to add/remove/modify KPIs to your liking. Although this step requires more work, it should become fairly easy once you understand the general pattern of the spreadsheet.

Feedback, comments and contribution

One of the goal of immeria.net is to "make it easy to do web analytics" by providing educational ressources, documented processes and tools that are both easy to use and non-specific to a vendor ("product agnostic"). You are free to use this template, modify it and even redistribute it as long as its not for profit. Please send me your feedback and enhancements so I can continue to offer more enhancements and additional tools.


Web Analytics Dashboard Fun by immeria.net is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.5 Canada License.

Donate now! Although I'm releasing this tool for free, if you find this template useful and would like to see more free resources, any contribution would be appreciated! 
Note: As much as I would love to have an unlimited time and bank account, please do not contact me for support of this template unless you are willing to send in a contribution...

Always be testing (and learning!)

Bryan Eisenberg's latest book, "Always Be Testing: The Complete Guide to Google Website Optimizer", is now shipping at Amazon. I had the chance to view an earlier draft and I'm awaiting my copy within days. Bryan posted about the book and the upcoming seminars.

About the book

For years companies have tried to develop THE best website, even shamelessly copying from the so called "best of breed". The reality is although technology can be copied, although business processes can be inspired from best practices, humans can't be that easily copied. If one of the distinctive element of any company is its workforce, the decisive factor of success is understanding the client. And the only way to know if your website works for your clients is to test, measure and optimize your Persuasion Architecture.

A continuous improvement process isn't complete until we reach 100% success... in the meantime, read this book, learn a whole lot about testing, see what others are doing, and get plentiful of ideas to get going!

Although the book titles states "Google Website Optimizer", the book is really an excellent introduction to the concept of A/B and multivariate testing for any solution.

A funny situation!

For years companies have tried to develop THE best website, even shamelessly copying from the so called "best of breed".

When I read Bryan's latest blog post, "Always be testing unleashed" I clicked through to view the two versions of his book cover (since yes, he is doing A/B testing on that too!).

Shock!

I though my browser had a problem! Compare the two websites below. The first one is http://wasp.immeria.net, the site I created for my tool almost a year ago, wihle the second is the newly launched site by Bryan http://www.testingtoolbox.com/:

Site A: WASP	Site B: Testingtoolbox.com
http://wasp.immeria.net	http://www.testingtoolbox.com

Now... I feal a bit embarrassed and pleased at the same time... I've known Bryan for a while and I'm sure he wouldn't intentionally pick a site design so close to something that already exists in such a close industry. With Bryan's and FutureNow experience, I guess they took this design because they saw there was a good potential for persuasion architecture optimization. On the other hand, I wouldn't want people visiting either of the site thinking we stealed design from each other. It's simply that we both took inspiration from Template World!

A/B analysis of both sites

So now, you can visit both sites and comment about how to improve both sites! Some details like the following:

• Buttons: The 3 big boxes on my site are clickable, while TestingTool click must be done on the small arrow within the box.
• Tabs: My site uses tabs at the top navigation as a reminder of the site section you're in. Bryan's site doesn't have any visual clue on where you are.
• Logo: By convension, the top-left logo is supposed to bring you home (safeharbor). Bryan's site will get you out of the book's site to FutureNow main site.
• White space: Notice the amount of white space between the top nav and the 3 big buttons. I reduced it on my site because I wanted to bring most content above the fold.
  
• Call to action: On my site, the green "Add to Firefox" is my conversion goal, we would presume for a book it would be something like "Buy the book now", but it's not there.
  

Any comments are welcome!

WASP v0.50: Launched on a 4th of July

Another step toward the Web Analytics Solution Profiler/Debugger (WASP for short!) v1.0 milestone. This interim version includes some great enhancements!

• Did you know support teams, implementation specialists and trainers working for the web analytics market leaders are using WASP? Vendors: read on for specific details on how to get involved!
• Top consulting agencies from all around the world are also using WASP! Agencies: I'm looking for case studies, contact me to get involved!

In the coming days I will provide short feature/training videos explaining how to get the most of WASP.

Enhancements, new and fixed

• Multi-tool tabs: some people complained the sidebar was becoming un-usable when multiple tools were found on a single page. Now the sidebar shows a two-level tabbing interface, the first one being the tool category, the second the specific tool. Check out Avinash Kaushik blog to see it in action, I think he has the most tools I have ever seen on a site!
  
• Site crawling: the crawling feature, introduced in the previous release, now use a sophisticated wizard that makes it easy to crawl from any web page, a sitemap or use a list of URLs from a file. You can set the crawl depth and max pages, follow robots exclusion rules and even include/exclude specific pages. A status bar shows progress and you can pause/resume the crawling process. Important: the crawling is limited to 100 pages in this version.
• Self-disclosure when crawling: WASP will report itself by modifying the user-agent string. WASP also makes it easy to exclude crawling trafic by showing the exact IP address being used.
  
• Reporting: the CSV output has been improved and there is now a slick web-based reporting interface. The tags are now broken down by columns, making it very easy to spot pages with missing tags or invalid ones.
• Save your sitemap! Once a site crawl is completed, you can save to a file compatible with the sitemap.xml standard.
• Multivariate testing highlighter: if the sidebar is shown and a multivariate tool is found, the area will be highlighted with the distinctive WASP yellow & brown border!
• Support: I'm relying on the great "Get Satisfaction" community-based support platform. So if you have ideas, feature requests, problems or find bugs (yep! there are some), visit support.immeria.net
• New tools: Now detects 112 web analytics, voice of customer, multivariate testing, behavioral targeting and other tags (beacon).
• Of course, WASP is compatible with Firefox 3

Getting it or upgrading

Three easy ways to upgrade or get WASP:

1. Get it NOW! Easiest: Visit wasp.immeria.net and click on the "Add to Firefox" green button
2. Upgrade: If you already have WASP, do "Tools/Add-ons" from the Firefox menu, then click on the "Find Updates" button. But be aware the version on the official Mozilla website is often updated several days later than what's on my official site.
3. Wait some time...: If you already have WASP installed, Firefox will eventually trigger an automatic update and prompt you to confirm.

Coming up next

Here's some of what remain to be done for the full v1.0 release:

• Provide a more "analyst friendly" mode
• Improve the reporting feature
• Higher limits for crawling and a "stealth" mode to avoid increasing ads impressions and web analytics page views
• Specific implementation diagnostic for select vendors
• Give the option to open WASP in a pop-up window or a bottom-bar
• Option to enable/disable specific tools
• Online purchase and licensing

Now is time to contribute!

There will always be a free, basic version of WASP available... however:

Any contribution received before the official release of v1.0 will be applied as a discount of 200% of the contribution amount.


That is, give 125$ now and get a $250 discount toward the licensing of WASP v1.0!

>>> Contribute now!

Licensing details

The more advanced features will be based on an annual license:

Edition	Cost	Max pages/report
Personal	Free	100
Analyst	250$/yr	10,000
Professional	1,000$/yr	Unlimited

The "Corporate Edition", specifically suited for vendors, agencies and market/financial analysts will include unlimited users, the "Market Research" function and other exclusive features. Please contact me for additional details.

Vendors, get involved!

WASP is the most sophisticated web analytics tag debugger available on the market. Period.

If you are a vendor, you can make it even easier for your customers by becoming a WASP partner/sponsor. In the future, WASP will offer more specific features such as implementation diagnostic, best practices audit and enhanced reporting, for participating vendors.

Montreal-based Emovendo named Google Website Optimizer Technology Partner

Google announced today the Google Website Optimizer Technology Partner Program and Montreal based Emovendo is among the first six companies to be part of that new program.

The key element is to "make it easier by offering specific documentation and technical support. They can also automate the process of adding Website Optimizer tags, so you can launch experiments faster than ever, with fewer dependencies on your IT team."

Emovendo's PageVester is a very intuitive landing page generator that integrates with SalesForce. Create an efficiently designed landing page, publish and manage your campaign, then collect the results directly into SalesForce as new leads. I know this will please a lot of marketers: create profesionally designed landing pages without any IT intervention.

As a Website Optimizer partner, PageVester's point and click interface alreadt allows easy integration of Google Analytics, AdWords campaign management and now makes it very easy to apply multivariate testing to those landing pages.

Analytics tools like strawberries and oranges

There is a fascinating discussion going on in the Yahoo! web analytics forum.

I haven't seen such a heated discussion in a very long time, especially in a forum about web analytics. Aren't we passionate or what!? :)

The whole thing started with a comment that GA data could be lost or delayed and how this would impact analysis, reporting to upper management and the resulting decision making. Then the debate heated up with comments about GA being good or not, benefits of free tools vs paid, etc.

My take

Google Analytics (or other low-end solutions, some of them very good) and high-end tools are like comparing strawberries and oranges... still fruits and you can still get pretty good juice out of them, but not quite the same. Some will even mix both juices to make pretty good cocktails... In fact, around 10% of the sites use both GA and another solution.

And somehow, sometimes for unknown reasons, people are allergic to strawberries...

Are you of legal age?

If you start by looking at your web analytics maturity level, and consciously decide where you want to be on that scale, you will pretty easily find out if GA is a good fit or a high-end tool such as Omniture would be better.

I'm referring to Gartner's web analytics maturity model presented by Bill Grassman at eMetrics San Francisco last year:


Google Analytics is a level 1, most of level-2 and some of level-3 type of tool. Omniture will cover you up to most of level 4 if you use Test & Target, Discover, Genesis and imports/exports. Level 5 is serious BI that go beyond web analytics (think Davenport's "Competing on analytics").

GA, Coremetrics, Omniture and a bunch of others each have very unique characteristics that makes them better fits in some situations. The market research I'm doing clearly shows that some tools are better suited at some types of businesses and different levels of web analytics maturity.

Google Analytics has significantly increased the awareness about web analytics, which is a very good thing. The problem we now face is setting the expectations for companies aiming at the higher levels of the scale with a tool that is appropriate for some of it, but not all. As a consultant, it is my role and my responsibility to recommend the best solution for each situation. In some cases, it might be more profesional to let go a client that aim for the sky but simply won't understand the differences and limitations between the tools because all they see is the "free" aspect of Google Analytics...

An orange juice in the morning is fine, a Pina Colada in the afternoon has a little more power!

Google Analytics v3.0: my speculation

Digital Alex has an interesting post about what he think will be announced from Google at next week's eMetrics. Basically more social media measurement in Google Analytics trough the integration of MeasureMap.

Of course it's interesting to us, bloggers, but the next level of web analytics is not only about adding Feedburner, MeasureMap or YouTube data. It's about integration, customization, collaboration and visualization brought to the next level.

I think the last post about "The Action Dashboard" from Avinash might not be a coincidence...

Read on...

Google Analytics v3.0?

Here's my take on what I think (and would love to see) in Google Analytics v3.0:

• API: simply put, all Google services have APIs and there is no reason why Google Anlaytics wouldn't have one... we've been asking for it for a long time. Bet it will be there!
  
• Custom reporting: slicing & dicing of data is key. I want to use any metric, any dimension, any segment and create my multi-level breakdown report the way I want.
  
• Custom metrics: one user variable? c'mon! I should be able to integrate all the data I want, either from offline sources (welcome API again!) or as new metrics gathered from the web. People have learned to use other fields and do all kind of acrobatics to use more than one user variable... it's time to make it official and easy. For example, wouldn't it be interesting to bring the 4Q data right into GA and correlate the results with user behaviour?
  

The killer: custom dashboards

Now it gets even more interesting!

• Import/export: Google Docs spreadsheet doesn't allow you to import data from a web source. Either allow "Save to Google Docs" from the GA interface or import from a web source straight into Google Docs.
  
• Google Docs: No more Excel? We all know MS Excel is the web analyst best friend. Why not bring that data into Google Docs spreadsheets? Leverage the collaborative capabilities of Google Docs to share in edit or read only mode and even use the discussion feature to comment it.
  
• Charting & Gadgets: from the Google Docs spreadsheet data, it's very easy to build basic graphs and very sophisticated visualizations like Gauges, Time Series, Motion Chart, Timelines, Gantt and Org charts and new ones are being added by 3rd parties.
• Dashboarding: bring that to the next level, create a fully customized dashboard in iGoogle and share it to whoever you like. iGoogle allows you to include several types of gadgets. Imagine a financial dashboard that would include Google News, Stocks and Web revenues! Imagine a marketing dashboard that would include competitive data, Google Reader RSS feeds from your competitors' blogs along your AdWords and conversion performance shown as gauges and timelines.
• Alerts: The only thing missing are notifications when values get outside of the acceptable ranges. Google Docs already include the notifications when a spreadsheet, a range or even a specific cell. The only thing missing is allowing to send those notifications based on some rules. I'm sure that would be an easy fix.
  

Basically, the only missing piece of the puzzle is the ability to import/export to Google Docs! From there, everything else becomes possible...

If my predictions turn out to be true, I would easily see Google Analytics inching even more on the higher end players.

We'll see next week.

Book review: Advanced web metrics with Google Analytics

I have the privilege of being a reviewer of Brian J. Clifton's upcoming book "Advanced Web Metrics with Google Analytics". Most books either address the broad concepts of web analytics or provide a long list of tips & tricks for a specific product. This is not the case with Brian's book. It's the first one I see that brings the concepts and apply them to a specific tool, namely Google Analytics.

Written in non-technical terms, the 300 pages book also provides plenty of detailed information about the practices and techniques to set up and configure Google Analytics. For those who want to go deeper, it also include a chapter on Google Analytics hacks.

The four parts of the book are:

1. Measuring Success
2. Using Google Analytics Reports
3. Implementing Google Analytics
4. Using Visitor Data to Drive Website Improvement
   

Each section begins with the fundamentals that need to be considered, then gradually bring details and provide real-world examples to demonstrate the concepts.

I see three scenarios where this book is a must:

• You are using GA: even if you think you know it all, you would be surprised!
  
• You wonder if GA is for you: the book gives you enough details to see it in action, understand it's power and see if it's the right tool for you.
  
• You want to learn the concepts of web analytics and apply them: I already said in a previous post that the best way to learn is to mix concepts and hands on.
  

Do you know ballet?

It's always exciting to launch a new site, even if I didn't do much to contribute as of yet! I have been enrolled as a web analytics consultant to work on the National Ballet of Canada a few weeks ago.

Analysis process

The initial steps went something like this:

1. Listen to the business mission, goals and objectives (regardless of the web site)
2. Determine their web analytics maturity: the who's, what and how
3. Identified current pain points and challenges
   
4. Identify key goals on the web that can translate into KPIs
5. Established an historical baseline and at the same time, tried to identify quick wins. The tool used was VisiStat.
   
6. Provided instructions for Google Analytics tagging as well as CrazyEgg for the home page
   
7. Now into the post implementation quality assurance and will asses the current site vs. baseline in the upcoming days/weeks.
   

Site characteristics

Other than content about performances and performers, the site includes a B2C component for online ticket sales, so the conversion process is obviously a key element in measuring the success of the site. There are numerous events, dates, different seatings categories, various discounts etc. so the event and seating selection needs to be as intuitive as possible. There's even a "view from your seat" feature. The website also needs to reflect the unique mood and experience that is ballet. Unique site design, some high-res pictures and short movies bring a touch of class to the whole online experience.

Shame on me, I never went to a ballet event other than The Nutcracker... nevertheless I can appreciate the qualities of this form of Art and I will plan on attending one of the upcoming performance.

[WASP] minor bug fixes - v0.32

I decided to do another quick release of WASP to fix minor issues.

Getting it or upgrading

Three easy ways to upgrade or get WASP:

1. Visit wasp.immeria.net and click on the large "Download" button
2. If you already have WASP, the easiest way to upgrade is simply to do "Tools/Add-ons" from the Firefox menu, then click on the "Find Updates" button.
3. Alternatively, if you already have WASP installed, Firefox will eventually trigger an automatic update and prompt you to confirm.
   

New & improved

Here's whats new and enhanced in v0.32:

• Improved: There's one major change in this release: WASP now looks at the HTTP GET rather than the RESPONSE. A bit technical, but what this means is a slightly better detection. I was also able to further optimize then detection algorithm.
  
• Improved: WASP was already handling Google Analytics (GA code) and Google Analytics (Urchin code) and now offer better handling of Google Website Optimizer.
  
• Improved: For Omniture SiteCatalyst and Google Analytics, there's now a quick-help that shows when you click on one item from the tree.
• New: Now detects 77 solutions including WysiStat, TNS Metrix, ProspectXtractor, m-pathy.

What's next?

Following my call for "angel advisers" and a "user group" I got amazing feedback. On the advisers side, I'm very thankful to great minds of the web analytics industry who took some of their precious time on the phone or through email. People like Bryan Eisenberg, Avinash Kaushik, Joseph Carrabis, John Hossack from VKI Studios, Eric Peterson and Brian Clifton. I was in "listening" mode, gathering recommendations and advices to better orient WASP from a business perspective. The next step will be to reach out to the user base and set the list of features and prioritize them for a v1.0 of WASP.

WASP v0.31 is out

I decided to do a quick release of WASP because a couple of people inquired about the new features.

Getting it or upgrading

Three easy ways to upgrade or get it:

1. Visit wasp.immeria.net and click on the large "Download" button
2. If you already have WASP, the easiest way to upgrade is simply to do "Tools/Add-ons" from the Firefox menu, then click on the "Find Updates" button.
3. Alternatively, if you already have WASP installed, Firefox will eventually trigger an automatic update and prompt you to confirm.
   

New & improved

Here's whats new and enhanced in v0.31:

• Cool! There is now a special handling for Google Website Optimizer. If the page is an original page, a variation page or the conversion page, it will be indicated in the sidebar.
  
• Cool! Google Analytics handling of cookies is a bit special, to make it easier, they are now expanded into a subtree.
• Cool! When Omnniture SiteCatlyst or Google Analytics are detected, each variable now has a short description of its usage. Those descriptions will be improved in coming releases to link to articles and knowledge base. I'm still looking for a complete list of Google Analytics QueryString parameters and their use...
  
• New: Added piwik and phpmyvisites
• New: Detects the new Tongji Baidu, a Google equivalent from China
• Fixed: Fixed CrazyEgg detection
• Improved: Increased tracking cache from 5 to 7, track only what appears to be a public host, strip www from tracking host
• Bug fix: Right-click on status bar doesn't toggle sidebar (show pop-up menu)
• ... and VisualSciences/WebSideStory HBX is now called Omniture SiteCatalyst HBX :)
  

Free Landing Page Optimization webcast from VKI Studios

Last week I had a very interesting chat with John Hossak, VP of Business Development for the Vancouver-based VKI Studios.

John will be doing a free webcast on Google Website Optimizer on Feb. 5th. He will go through the step by step process of doing landing page optimization:

• Determining an appropriate test methodology (A/B, Multivariate, etc.)
• Deciding which page elements to test
• Developing test pages
• Implementing the tests
• Analyzing the results

Based on his valuable feedback, WASP will include information specifically geared toward Google Website Optimizer. It will tell you if the page you are viewing is an original page, a variation page or a conversion page used as part of a test.

"Omniture and Google Analytics over-hyped" - CMS Watch

"Omniture and Google Analytics over-hyped", that's the headline of the press release from CMS Watch I got in my mail box this morning.

They go on to say that "today (they) rejected the snowball of hype suggesting that Google Analytics and Omniture are the only remaining solid choices for Web Analytics" and "CMS Watch research finds that enterprises can select from a broad selection of established vendors that work well in diverse scenarios and can scale as web site traffic grows".

CMS Watch is absolutely right that there are some great products, some of them much better suited for a particular client and situation (because of price, local presence, specific features, etc.). This seems to be especially true in Europe.

However, I don't agree that larger market share means over-hyped. Are they delivering on their promise? I think so.

Furthermore, you can't really compare Google Analytics and Omniture, they are at different positions on the large spectrum of web analytics solutions.

Google Analytics is great to start in the field and Forrester put it near the middle of their Wave: good offering, good strategy. Other products can compare advantageously to Google Analytics.

I also share Forrester's opinion about Omniture: strong strategy and strong offering. Omniture SiteCatalyst goes way beyond Google Analytics in terms of segmentation, custom metrics, system integration and advanced analysis capabilities... for a price. But web analytics doesn't stop with data collection and analysis, one need to look at the larger offering and think about other complementary tools to complete the Trinity approach put forward by Avinash Kaushik: Behavior, Outcomes and Experience. This includes A/B and multivariate testing, surveys, performance analytics, etc. Should you go with best of suite or best of class?

Companies looking at spending tens of thousand of dollars annually in a multi-year contract for a tool/service, training and put their faith in such a product to take important business decisions better do their research seriously. Although expensive, I think the report might make a lot of sense for companies currently in the selection process.

The web analytics vendors market shares I have started to publish might also be a consideration in the selection process. I leave it to you to decide if going for the bigger player is a good or a bad thing.

It's still XMas time: WASP 0.3 released

What is WASP?

(if you still wonder...)
WASP is the Web Analytics Solution Profiler, a free Firefox extension aimed at web analytics implementation specialists and web analysts who wants to do quality assurance and understand how their web analytics solution is implemented.

>>> Install it now! <<<

What's new

It's getting very close to v1.0, I still have one small memory leak to fix (when closing a pop up window) and I want to tweak a little bit more for Omniture and Google. Here's what's new in this release:

• Now detects 68 web analytics and ad networks solutions
• Tweaked tracking for Omniture SiteCatalyst and the recently released new Google Analytics tags
• Various bug fixes, including a memory leak and the "hanged" status bar icon bug
• Improved analytics of web analytics... that is, WASP includes it's own tags that allows me to provide web analytics vendor market shares statistics (you can opt out of this feature from the options menu).
  

Your feedback is important!

Thanks to all of you who sent me such great feedback. Companies from all around the world are contacting me to add new products that have a local focus, such as in Brazil, Spain and Italy. Your positive input is always appreciated, but constructive critics are also accepted!

If you haven't done it yet, please take a few seconds to fill out my two quick polls:

1. If a special edition of WASP had a price tag, which packaging would be most effective for you? Take this poll
2. Which features would you like to see added to WASP? Take this poll

If you are inclined to do so - or if you use WASP for professional purposes - a donation would be appreciated!

Web Analytics vendors market shares

In this second installment of my analysis of web analytics vendors market shares, 7,788 web sites were analyzed between December 4th and January 2nd.

Figures remain very similar to last month's results, which makes them even more valuable because we now have a baseline of nearly 15,000 web sites and over 300,000 page views that were collected over a period of about two months:


Remember last month I said "Google Analytics might be very widely used, it is implemented on web sites that receives, overall, less traffic than Omniture". As we see in the next chart, SiteCatalyst alone already has more depth than Google. That is, more page were viewed where Omniture's solution was found than pages with Google Analytics. What does it mean? Basically it's a confirmation that sites with high traffic implements Omniture SiteCatalyst more than anything else (maybe not such a big surprise).


Some interesting insights:

• It will be interesting to see how MS Gatineau will grow it's market share.
  
• Solutions such as TapeFailure, RobotReplay, ClickTale, CrazyEgg were found on less than 1% of the sites.
• WebTrends is a bit tricky since WASP doesn't look at log-based solutions. So in this case, WebTrends stats are only for WebTrends Live (i.e. pages with JavaScript tags).

Again, your feedback and comments are welcome.

Note: This anonymous data is collected by WASP from users who have not opted-out from sending it. WASP is the Web Analytics Solution Profiler, a free Firefox extension aimed at web analytics implementation specialists, web analysts and savvy web surfers who wants to understand how their behavior is being analyzed.

Web Analytics market analytics

WASP was primarily created to ease quality assurance of web analytics solutions tagging. But as often the case with innovations, the primary idea leads to a bunch of other possibilities. I also listened to your suggestions and 20% of the 120 respondents to my little poll about future WASP features said they would like to get market stats.

How does it work?

WASP was downloaded about 30,000 times and the latest version includes it's own analytics tags. This means that I can collect anonymous and aggregate information about the tools implemented on the sites visited while WASP is active. So as you browse, you not only get info about the tags on a page, but you also contribute to a global view of the web analytics market. A bit what like Alexa does for site rating, but especially made for web analytics. Cool isn't it? (And yes, this is stated in the EULA and no personal information is collected).

Here are some base metrics:

• 30,000 downloads since the first version of WASP released in Feb. 2007,
  
• 8,000 installs of the latests in a month,
  
• 200,000 pages analyzed in a month,
• 10,000 sites analyzed in a month

I think we now have enough data to look at!

Web Analytics market shares

Out of 10,016 sites visited by about 8,000 users over the last month:

• Google Analytics was found on 64% of them
• Omniture SiteCatalyst on 16%
• WebSideStory/VisualSciences HBX on 8%
• WebTrends on 7%
• Coremetrics on 2%
  

But, when looking at the volume of traffic, we find this:

• Google Analytics was found on 34% of the page viewed
• Omniture SiteCatalyst on 20%
• WebSideStory/VisualSciences HBX on 15%
• WebTrends, 9%
• Coremetrics, 2%

Analysis of web analytics vendors market share

Despite Google Analytics taking the lion share of the market in terms of installation (64% of visited sites), Omniture SiteCatalyst move to purchase VisualSciences is very wise. Not only it will give it nearly 25% of the market, it will also put Omniture at par with Google in terms of reach (as shown by the 20%+15% combined page views of SiteCatalyst and HBX). Simply put, Google Analytics might be very widely used, it is implemented on web sites that receives, overall, less traffic than Omniture and VisualSciences.

With the recent tsunami of changes at WebTrends, it will be interesting to see if their market shares will erode in the future. Coremetrics getting out at 2% seems a bit low, especially considering Forrester's most recent positioning put them with the Leaders, with a stronger strategy than Omniture and show a similar market presence. But that being said, Forrester also shows WebTrends with an even stronger market presence in the same quadrant, which I find a bit odd.

I'm curious to hear you about this first analysis. Does it make sense? Considering WASP looks at actual sites being visited instead of information provided by each vendor, could it reveal a more accurate market picture or be somehow biased?

Be wary of Google Analytics case studies: take two

A warning...

I posted about a little discovery of my own last week: 4 out of the 10 current Google Analytics case studies don't appear to be using it at all (at least, not anymore) and two others can mislead the reader. This prompted me to raise the hand and warn about Google Analytics case studies. I also looked at other players and noticed the market leaders have much better results while the smaller players are often worse (actually, a lot of the client list they show switched to Google Analytics).

...and a good sign

Yesterday, the Google Analytics Blog asked for your success stories. Might be a coincidence, maybe not, but nevertheless a good thing and a message to other solution providers: make sure you have an editorial timeline to review client lists and case studies posted on the web!

A little side note

Google Analytics Blog uses Blogger (I do too). Blogger, like many other blog softwares, as a feature that automatically show backlinks. So in theory, this post should actually become visible there. I wonder what will happen :)

Be wary of Google Analytics case studies

Is it ethical to keep online case studies of clients that are not using your solution anymore? Or to present case studies in a way that could mislead your potential clients?

What I found out

I'm getting closer to the next version of my WASP Firefox extension, and to ease the testing process, I figured I could build a quality assurance test where I would visit client sites referred by each vendor. A list of high-profile clients shown with emphasis on the home page and case studies is a proven way to increase confidence and credibility. But here's what I found out...

Google Analytics case studies

I was in for a surprise! Take the case of Google, which highlights a number of case studies:

• BuildDirect Google Analytics
• Discount Tire: Google Analytics
• RE/MAX: Google Analytics
• Roche: Google Analytics
• Vueling: Google Analytics
• CKE Restaurants, for the Spicy Paris campaign: Google Analytics
• Financial Times: WebTrends live, Google Analytics is used for campaign landing pages
• Agency.com: WebSideStory HBX v1.4... no traces of Google Analytics
• Career Builder: Omniture SiteCatalyst, even CBCampus.com, the site referred in the case study, uses Omniture and as no traces of Google.
  
• Deckers: none identified (might be log based).

Could it be that 4 clients out of of the 10 Google Analytics case studies are not even using it? They might have been in the past, they are not anymore? Saying the Financial Times uses Google Analytics is a sure way to bring credibility, but when digging the case study, we find out GA is used for landing pages only. While the core site, FT.com, relies on WebTrends.

I'm sure Google Analytics is not the only solution provider in this situation. In fact, I've even found a number of vendors that are not using their own solution on their corporate web site...

What about others?

I took a look at a couple of the Omniture Customer Showcase and a random sample of 10 of those sites resulted in 100% Omniture usage (along with some double-tagging with Google Analytics). Same thing for VisualSciences WebSideStory Customers... I can stop there.

My two-cents

1. Can you put a date on the case studies? Being in the web analytics field, you know that what makes a good story is the context. Without any time reference, we loose a valuable contextual element that can easily lead to assumptions and misjudgment.
2. Take their claims with a grain of salt (and pepper). Everybody is a "market leader", and an "industry first" at something. Cut the crap and do your homework: does the solution fit your needs, not those of others!
   
3. As they say at Microsoft: "Eat your own dog found": if a vendor is not even using its own tool (and especially if using Google Analytics!), how can you believe their solution is anything but useless? (This is especially true of smaller players, but even some of the major vendors are using both their own and Google Analytics!).

(shameless plug)
WASP can help you detect which web analytics solution is being used by top sites and competitors. And it can help you insure the quality of your own site tagging.

Running scared of Google Analytics

While doing my morning's parsing of web analytics feeds I read "Google's Killer App", by Bandt Dainow. Brandt is CEO of ThinkMetrics, offering the InSite reporting solution, but it looks that it will now phase it out and switch to Google.

While Brandt article make some good points about the inherent power of Google and the great improvements brought by Google Analytics v2.0, there are some other points that I'm not so sure about.

Awareness and maturity

While Google Analytics might have taken the 1st position in terms of number of installations, most industry analysts agree the biggest benefit it brought is the level of awareness of the web analytics field. Smaller vendors are suffering because the quality of GA is there, and the cost can't be beaten. While working on WASP, I have identified nearly 200 WA solutions... Some consolidation and cleanup is a necessary evil in a maturing market. VisualSciences + WebSideStory, Omniture + TouchClarity, etc. While Brandt article says WebTrends might be able to compete longer, my reading of the market tells me that WebTrends is loosing ground. Another aspect that Brandt seems to be forgetting is Gatineau from Microsoft, which, from what has leaked, should bring a new player on the checker board.

One size doesn't fit all

At the same time, we see most of the industry leaders (Omniture, VisualSciences, Coremetrics, WebTrends) continue to improve and extend their offering. Again, while it can be argued that several companies now implement GA along with another tool, industry analysts stresses the "process" and "scarce resources" are the most important elements while the "tools" are getting at similar levels of maturity.

While the "majors" are playing at their level, some smaller players seems to be comfortable offering a different set of values. For example, that's the case of iMinr, a small-scale solution built by a friend that brings an interesting twists that. He doesn't pretend to compete with Google Analytics and chose to focus on a local market with top notch service.

Innovation

The recent stream of ClickTale, TapeFailure and RobotReplay demonstrates there is still room for innovation in fields that are complementary and extend web analytics. We can also expect more performance metrics and qualitative solutions (surveys and such) to become easily integrated with web analytics.

My take

I don't think it's time yet to throw you WA solution out the window and switch to GA, as Brandt implies, especially if you haven't nailed down the process and sourcing aspects of web analytics. When comparing different vendors, you should look beyond the reporting aspects and the base cost (even if free!) and look at the complementary services that surround the core offering (campaign management, multivariate testing, back-end integration, support, training, etc.).

Google AdWords Conversion hick-ups

It's common practice to add the JavaScript code snippet to the conversion page of a campaign that was initiated trough AdWords. This way, we can track the whole conversion process from its PPC origin all the way to the conversion. Fine with me.

However, recently (June 1st?), Google changed its policy and now a subtle but intrusive and annoying little box shows up on the conversion page.

Google AdWords invasion

Here's Google explanation about "Why is the conversion tracking text visible?":

We want to notify the user that his/her site activity is being tracked. However, because we also want to protect the user's identity, we also make it clear that we don't record or use the user's personal data in any way.

And "Why use visible text for conversion tracking when everyone else uses an invisible image?":

Google has chosen to use visible Google Site Stats text for the conversion tracking process to make this process apparent to users. Our goal is not to place our brand or promote our company on your web pages; however, we feel that it is important to be honest with and respect the privacy of users being tracked.

For example, if users see and click on this text, Google provides them with information about not accepting the conversion tracking cookie if they wish, and we assure them that none of their personal information is being used or recorded in any way. Users can also learn more about conversion tracking itself by clicking on this text, and will also have the opportunity to provide feedback about their experience with your site.

We made the Google Site Stats text block as unobtrusive as possible, and ask that you place it in a corner of your confirmation page (the page after a transaction has taken place).

Isn't it the responsibility of the "host" to have the proper privacy policies and disclaimers? In the case of AdWords conversion tracking, Google is merely an utility library being included in "our" site, it is not "their" property. They don't have any "ownership" of the web page. If we're using other "tools" to build our web site, are we going to end up with a bunch of little boxes all claiming their own part of the page and the user's attention for the sake of "protecting privacy" and "making it clear"? This looks unacceptable to me.

Broken page rendering

This doesn't seems to be a problem on our end since I have noticed other sites with similar issues. Because of this, I have already noticed some sites with screwed page rendering because what was a non-intrusive piece of code (without any display) has now become this annoying little box that shows up wherever the code was included.

Statistics & feedback

The "Google Site Stats - send feedback" box (or simple text link) leads to a simple explanation page explaining how the user is being tracked.

What do you think? Anyone else noticed that? Do you think it's fine or are we using Google AdWords Conversion in the wrong way?

CMS Watch Web Analytics Report - revisited

A few days ago I blogged about the newly released report from CMS Watch: "The Web Analytics Report". Since I contributed to it, I was able to get a copy and quickly took a glimpse at it and read the first few pages. Other early readers also reported about it, all of us saying it looked great but didn't have time to read it.

Today I was on my way to eMetrics and had plenty of time to read it... plane took off one hour late, flew for 6 hours, and turned around another 45 minutes.

My take

If you are new to web analytics, or if you are yet to decide on which solution you will use, the first part of the report is an absolute must. But at $1,175 it's expensive for an introductory book. The biggest value is in part 6: Web Analytics Software Vendors.

Worth it?

Some people, like web analytics guru Avinash Kaushik, openly says if you don't have a product, you can start with a free one; Google Analytics or Microsoft Gatineau for example. So why spend the time and money on the report? The problem is once you're started, you are likely to stick with the free tool, or think all web analytics solutions are like Google Analytics and constantly refer to it as a base point. There are some very good reasons to look at other products right from the start. That's where the report will help you pick the two or three products that looks like the most valid fit for your business.

The product evaluation appears to be pretty good, at least for the products I know. And I learned a few things about them.

Recommendation

Funnily, the report says on page 3 that "it is interesting to note that a definition of Web analytics cannot be found on the Web Analytics Association website'... But right at the top of the About page of the WAA site it's there:

The Official WAA Definition of Web Analytics
Web Analytics is the measurement, collection, analysis and reporting of Internet data for the purposes of understanding and optimizing Web usage.

I think we can excuse this small glitch because in the end, if you are going to spend tens of thousand of dollars a year on a solution, you should probably start by doing your homework and gathering the most valuable data. It doesn't mean to go blindfold and use only the CMS Report, but it certainly ease the decision process, which amounts to saved time and effort worth more than the report price.