I sat in the Google Analytics and Omniture Presentations this afternoon - no surprises with the Google Analytics except some new announcements - more integration past Google Checkout and AdWords seems to be the direction - and a willingness to look at getting into the A/B Testing area - (in fact - Google Web Optimizer was announced the next day...and Brett Crosby gave some hint of it but announced nothing concrete till the following day).
The Omniture Site Catalyst application - a listening tag can get basic stats on Flash Applications that is comparable with what I pull out of products like CoreMetrics/Surf-aid today - often, with a lot more effort. You still have to code the Flash - but it's info that does not tell you which parts the of the Flash are more effective.
As the presenter of the session referenced in the SiteCatalyst RIA section above, I would like to add a little clarification.
Omniture RIA Presentation Summary
The Omniture SiteCatalyst RIA presentation focused on analytics solutions for any type of RIA (Flash, AJaX, DHTML, etc.). It described the importance of understanding a macro-level view of the RIA and its various states to understand how the application influences overall site success, in terms of revenue, orders, leads, or whatever the success metric. The presentation also focused on the importance of getting analytics details at a micro-level, including what features visitors use, actions taken, and click-stream analysis. At both the macro and micro levels, Omniture products can provide effective data and analysis even down to the path level within an application, and provide information about RIA feature effectiveness. The point of the presentation was to highlight the value of understanding an application with the same level of analytics as you would with a traditional web site.
Flash Tracking Clarification
It was commented in the blog above, that the Omniture Flash solution “does not tell you which parts the of the Flash are more effective”. This comment stemmed from a quick question following the presentation. In answering, I did note that a basic implementation may not provide data to help answer what parts of an application are most effective. This could mean a basic implementation would only provide information about most popular features, most often clicked buttons, etc. but it would not show most influential features within the application. However, the typical implementation, and the one used for Omniture’s RIA solution, provides extremely powerful analytics, including detailed information about which elements of a Flash application are more effective.
The Omniture Flash Tracking solution is unique in its ability to provide powerful “page-view-like” analytics (including pathing and application feature influence analysis) using the native ActionScript programming language of Flash for a very simple, very lean implementation without any dependency on JavaScript. It even allows for analytics outside of the browser and on pages where JavaScript is difficult to implement. For more details, please see the Omniture whitepaper on this topic. http://www.omniture.com/static/405
Posted by: Steve Hammond | October 19, 2006 9:58 PM | Permalink to Comment