Forrester Wave; Web Analytics, Q3 2007
In September, Forrester published a list of their top picks for web analytics tools. If you want to blow a grand, you can buy the report here. If you're not in the mood to spend your Benjamins that way, I'll recap for you!
Making headway in the list is Visual Sciences Visual Site. Since WebSideStory and Visual Sciences became one, there has been a whole new set of products that integrate into HitBox. Really, Forrester seemed to like it because it is pretty. Yup. I'd agree. HBX has a nice interface and that really is a good selling point. If it's pretty you want to use it even it isn't the best data. I mean think about it. Dart is a killer tool, but the interface isn't nice and snazzy. For Joe Average stuck in web analytics, this can be oppressive. HBX is pretty with all sorts of graphs and colors; it actually draws you in a bit.
Other big guns like Omniture and Unica's NetInsight continue to do well. WebTrends also ranks well. This one always surprises me. I know WebTrends is supposed to be this awesome tool, but seriously guys, why can I not have my MS Office crap open while I'm trying to export data? This feature makes me loathe this software. No matter how good the data is, that makes me not want to use the program. That is a Shakespearian tragic flaw if ever I'd seen one.
ClickTracks and Google Analytics get honorable mentions this time around and I can see why. They're not as robust as the other programs. Don't get me wrong; these are great programs. They're just missing some features that the others have. Like Google Analytics, you can only have 4 different conversions there's really nothing there to hunt down click fraud. The other players tend to have add-ons to help.
This study was conducted using, like, 100 billion criteria, but the one piece of data that couldn't be factored in is you're business' website. Every website is different (well, unless you're a scraped clone of DMOZ), and have unique needs. This data is great and relevant, but make sure the features of any analytics package actually meet the needs of your site.
Making headway in the list is Visual Sciences Visual Site. Since WebSideStory and Visual Sciences became one, there has been a whole new set of products that integrate into HitBox. Really, Forrester seemed to like it because it is pretty. Yup. I'd agree. HBX has a nice interface and that really is a good selling point. If it's pretty you want to use it even it isn't the best data. I mean think about it. Dart is a killer tool, but the interface isn't nice and snazzy. For Joe Average stuck in web analytics, this can be oppressive. HBX is pretty with all sorts of graphs and colors; it actually draws you in a bit.
Other big guns like Omniture and Unica's NetInsight continue to do well. WebTrends also ranks well. This one always surprises me. I know WebTrends is supposed to be this awesome tool, but seriously guys, why can I not have my MS Office crap open while I'm trying to export data? This feature makes me loathe this software. No matter how good the data is, that makes me not want to use the program. That is a Shakespearian tragic flaw if ever I'd seen one.
ClickTracks and Google Analytics get honorable mentions this time around and I can see why. They're not as robust as the other programs. Don't get me wrong; these are great programs. They're just missing some features that the others have. Like Google Analytics, you can only have 4 different conversions there's really nothing there to hunt down click fraud. The other players tend to have add-ons to help.
This study was conducted using, like, 100 billion criteria, but the one piece of data that couldn't be factored in is you're business' website. Every website is different (well, unless you're a scraped clone of DMOZ), and have unique needs. This data is great and relevant, but make sure the features of any analytics package actually meet the needs of your site.
1 Comments:
Thanks for the summary, but you forget one of the high scorers. Coremetrics was also one of the "leaders," and in fact had the highest score on strategy and product direction.
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