Is Google Analytics the Killer App? No, according to Eric Peterson.  I did write earlier this week ( Is Google Analytics killing off the rest of the Web Analytics Industry?) that on the low end, yes, but on the high end, no.

"..I think the answer is Yes and No.  Certainly, on the low end, the answer is YES, the low end is, effectively won by Google - ClickTracks, for example, is dead (for better or worse - and I would not be surprised if that's why John Marshall quit ClickTracks a couple of months ago)."

All the solutions that Eric Peterson talk about are for companies that invest (at least, we hope) in Web Analytics Process and have needs way beyond what Google Analytics can hope to offer.  But for smaller companies - or one's that don't want to spend money on Analytics - Google Analytics has, pretty much, taken over the market - even so far as to go after ClickTracks.  According to Eric:

"…Google has “every feature in every product on the market”? Really? Are you sure? Because I can think of dozens and dozens of useful features that I’ve seen in solutions like ClickTracks, Visual Sciences, Omniture, WebTrends, Coremetrics, Unica, … basically every other solution on the market today that aren’t in the version of Google Analytics I’m using. Features like:

• Real visitor segmentation (multidimensional, ad hoc, etc.)
• Custom variables at the visitor, session, and page view level
• The ability to produce custom reports for automated delivery
• The ability to define custom metrics and customize reports in the interface
• The ability to import metadata as an input for analysis
• Commerce-related reports like browse-to-buy ratios
• A browser-overlay that can be customized

(This list goes on and on and on, and has been discussed a great deal by folks like Judah Phillips and Phil Kemelor.)

Right, and most of these things will not be important to most of the people that want Google Analytics.  On the low end, it has taken over, but on the high end, it can not hope to - nor would you want Google crawling and owning a Companies Web Analytics data.

But if anything, Eric's post proves that people who want Google Analytics probably aren't thinking process - don't make any investment (overall) in Analytics and probably don't have anyone really who "owns" analytics.  I know even that generalization is not true - but more or less, as a matter of degree - it's probably true that people who are not really thinking this through, like many of the clients I've end up with lately - are sold on Google Analytics.

But I wrote, in detail, just how messed up Google Analytics is when you try to solve some problems in Free Web Analytics tools cost you in other ways.  To me it supports what Eric Peterson is saying - people just use Google Analytics and then look what happens - they end up in deep doo (trying to get data GA can't handle) - because Google Analytics is not an Enterprise Application - it's not been built for the demands many large, Corporate Businesses require -

"..I was engaged to guide my client's 4 travel distributor websites to greener pastures in a Faustian deal (that I should not have accepted since it was too vague) by using Web Analytics and SEO; my involvement was actually more tangential to what they were doing on a daily basis - still, the client wanted me to be in the center of all of it - and pay me based on performance with a small down payment. 

Performance was based on increase of travel bookings over the last year's (2006) bookings.

As it stands, last year their sites were being redone (but not the commerce pages - figure that one out)  and there was not that much I really needed to deliver; this year, it's another story - with a great deal of information they say they need they hoped would come from the Analytics - information, unfortunately, that's not forthcoming.   Here's the story why it's not happening for them:

When a business that is in a state of unawareness of Analytics - they just want answers - they know nothing about how to make it happen…in other words, you have a business with no process - just a mess of software that does not work too well and is really hard to track.  Just owning that mess takes a full time headcount, you can't do it well unless you invest on having a specialist on board to manage the analytics.

Probably won't be my client much longer (that's a good thing - it's way more of a headache having clients like this than what it's worth) -they  had WebTrends (old version) and I told them to get ClickTracks Pro last year (I was influenced by Avinash Kaushik on that one - it turns out ClickTracks did work for the client - just not at the very last step of the transaction of a travel booking) and when we installed it we found out it was not as well suited because their commerce pages (shopping cart) was hosted on another site and ClickTracks could not, at that time, track the transaction all the way though to the end point (a booking confirmation page). 

The client, angry that Clicktracks did not work as well as they hoped or expected it to,  blamed me for not knowing Clicktracks limitations upfront, and decided to go with Google Analytics in June (because it's free instead of the 4000 bucks - then - it's now 9,000 for the same thing). 

They asked me if Google Analytics would work and it seemed to be tracking the commerce pages once the JavaScript variables were passed to Google Analytics (IE: step 1 page, step 2 page ….. step 7 page … we accomplished that part well enough).

But.. The free "Google Analytics" ended up not being able to show the ultimate source of the web traffic whereas the "paid" Clicktracks did! (once labels were set up for it - a tedious process, but it worked)"

There's probably a hundred stories just like mine - well meaning people who don't understand, don't want to understand - don't have the money or are now willing or able to spend it on a solution that would provide metrics - flock to Google Analytics and get caught in the bright glitzy interface and forget the product doesnt do all the things companies need and is still a limited tool that Google gave a face lift to .. but that's pretty much it.

As far as Brandt Dainow’s recent iMediaConnection piece on “Google’s Killer App.” - his statements seemed somewhat "odd" to me.  I'm glad that Eric brought us up to date on what is really going on there.   If Brandt Dainow wants to see the world as bei
ng taken over by Google Analytics, that's OK, but ours is not a community were you can express that kind of opinion and get away with it - there are people who know better that will call it.  I'm sorry I didn't .. all I felt is that it's kinda odd for Brandt Dainow to be giving up his business for GA and he did have some interesting ideas on how to use it.

But I began to suspect something was up as I read the whole article and he seemed to be leaving out the big "why"….why was he writing his article …what had really happened.  

As much as I like IMediaConnection and ClickZ as places where you can get good information, I also notice more often, the articles are just jump pages for authors to sell their own platforms and solutions.  That's fine - as long as they're honest about it and own up to some of the other solutions and occasionally refer to them - so they, at least, appear to have a balance view (we can't hope for true unbiasness in journalism, it probably doesn't exist).

But Brandt Dainow was not as upfront as he could and should have been - and I recall reading that article last week and wondering …why? Why is he writing this - what's really going on.

Just wish I voiced it then.  However, I still do believe that Google Analytics took over the low end of the market - but certainly not the high end and the mid tier, is up for grabs.