Yep, I got an advanced copy of the CMS Watch Web Analytics Report that evaluates 13 Web Analytics solutions (all the familiar faces and a couple of have never used — 24/7, AuriQ, ClickTracks, Coremetrics, Fireclick, Google Analytics, Nedstat, Omniture, SageMetrics, Unica, Visual Sciences, WebSideStory, WebTrends). 

I bolded those platforms I have personally used (above).

I briefly skimmed through the CMS Watch Web Analytics Report yesterday but have not had a chance to look at it in detail.  However, I'll say this much about the CMS Web Analytics Report - problems are mentioned along with the good points and strengths -and that's what you need when your evaluating web analytics platforms.

I'll have more to say about the CMS Watch Web Analytics Report shortly (hopefully before I get to the Emetrics Summit next week).

Eric T. Peterson made a comment yesterday in Occam's Razor - Eric likes the report (maybe I should print it out right now and start reading it!):

"…It turns out that, thanks to Phil Kemelor and the fine folks at CMSWatch we can all stop worrying about paying expensive and potentially biased consultants to help decide which analytics tool is most appropriate. I’ve just finished browsing a 281 page review copy of Phil’s “Web Analytics Report” and I have to say he did an ** excellent job ** and has produced the most comprehensive and technically complete document covering specific web measurement technologies ever written.

While Visual Sciences was not able to participate at the level Phil wanted, pretty much everything you’d want to know about the other major vendors is contained in this document. And while some will consider $1,175 pretty steep, given the cost of the alternatives and the amount of work that went into the document, this is a thousand bucks that could save you tens of thousands of dollars worth of headaches down the road.

Anyway, if you’re in the market for some unbiased research on the vendors, check out Phil’s work here:

http://www.cmswatch.com/Analytics/Report/

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WEB ANALYTICS BREAKS INTO MAINSTREAM 

Enterprises increasingly see analytics as

the "brains" behind e-marketing, but

underestimate resources needed to execute 

Silver Spring, MD, USA – CMS Watch, a vendor-neutral analyst firm that evaluates content technologies, has completed path-breaking research into the Web Analytics marketplace that finds enterprises and vendors alike working to integrate web analytics into a wide array of e-marketing services — including e-mail campaigns, keyword bid marketing, and customer segmentation — making Web Analytics a more mainstream enterprise concern.   

Today CMS Watch released the Web Analytics Report, which evaluates 13 major Web Analytics suppliers based on extensive vendor research, interviews with customers across a range of industry sectors, and "hands on" testing of solutions.   

Phil Kemelor served as lead analyst for the report. "Web Analytics vendors are moving quickly to try to become the 'brains' behind their customers' e-marketing efforts more broadly," said Kemelor.  "This makes a lot of sense," Kemelor added, "but web executives and marketing managers are finding they often lack the human and infrastructural resources required to take analytics to the next level, and we think 2007 will see enterprises addressing this more directly as Web Analytics appears more frequently on corporate radars." 

The report also found: 

  • New data mining and customer segmentation solutions are being rolled out by vendors such as WebTrends and Coremetrics. These can help enterprise customers focus online marketing efforts more effectively. However, many customers underestimate the analytics experience required to maximize the potential of these tools.
  • Partnering with other e-marketing suppliers enables vendors such as Omniture and Fireclick to offer best-of-breed tool choices to their customer base. However, this does not always solve tricky integration challenges amid debates over where the master e-marketing data warehouse should reside.
  • Increasingly sophisticated data and process integration requirements are driving a renewed reliance on IT resources to support e-marketing. In the past web marketers predominantly procured and managed analytics tools on their own.

Tony Byrne, founder of CMS Watch, said, "At an enterprise level, we anticipate a convergence with more traditional Business Intelligence (BI) approaches — especially since classic BI challenges of system performance, metadata, archiving, and data integrity are emerging among Web managers struggling to deal with ballooning data sets."  However, Byrne adds, "Today we see little interest in Web Analytics among traditional BI vendors, but savvy enterprises will encourage BI analysts and website analysts to get outside their separate silos." 

The Web Analytics Report provides detailed, comparative evaluations of 13 major Web Analytics vendors, including: 

24/7 - AuriQ  - ClickTracks  - Coremetrics - Fireclick  - Google Analytics  - Nedstat  - Omniture  - SageMetrics  - Unica  - Visual Sciences  - WebSideStory - WebTrends 

The Report can be purchased at http://www.cmswatch.com/Analytics/Report/. 

About CMS Watch

CMS Watch(tm) is an analyst firm that provides an independent source of buyer's advice on content technologies. Through highly detailed technical evaluations, CMS Watch helps sort out the complex landscape of potential solutions so that project teams can minimize the time and effort to identify and evaluate technologies suited to their particular requirements. To retain i
ts independence as a vendor-neutral analyst firm, CMS Watch works solely for solutions buyers and never for the vendors it covers. 

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