Web Analytics Digest: Reviews ClickTracks, Google, WebTrends, VisiStat

As the Director of Marketing for the renowned Tuvox.com, Nick Ezzo has been delving into Web analytics and the importance it has for today's online marketing success. Nick took a closer look at a few popular analytics services, and has provided a review. (See his Comparison chart.) He was also able to do a sit down with one of their technical directors for a quick Q & A.

Review: Comparing Top 4 Web Analytics Services
by Nick Ezzo, Director of Marketing, Tuvox.com

Since Google announced the release of their free analytics service earlier this year, Web analytics has become a more recognized tool for Website owners and online business sites. To Google's credit, their announcement helped spread awareness of the analytics concept, especially as applied to today's businesses and online advertising.

The importance of understandable site traffic reporting is apparent. Knowing what your visitors are doing, what pages they frequent, where they come from, and other such relevant data, has become vital and necessary information for growing and surviving in today's Internet market. Web Reporting and Analytics has become much more than a log file filled with endless lines of data meant for IT specialists. Today's reports are far richer than merely "page hits" or simple visitor tracking numbers. They have become a core tool for e-commerce, and are seen as a valuable companion in marketing everything from a "fan site" to a corporate blog.

There were several analytics services before Google's, and these were predominately aimed at hard-core e-commerce or large corporate sites. Now there are a few new services making their marks. These new, or "next generation," analytics companies are focusing on a more user-friendly approach.

Who is the best among them? Which one is right for you? The first thing to consider is, what one is easiest for you to analyze and use...which one saves you time, money and headaches while providing in-depth information on your site visitors? This review will look at a few popular services and compare their pros and cons.

Highlights: Very good click path detail and ROI reporting; very nice interface. I like the search engine reports, especially being able to see the site how a search engine "bot" sees it - very helpful from an SEO perspective. Their graphics are nice and quite interactive -- a few rungs above boring pie charts and graphs.

Lowlights: So many choices that it takes awhile to look them over, and every package and option has its own price. Reports will require some learning for small businesses that are just venturing into web reporting and analytics. Also, several reports are based on log files only, which can be useful for those with some IT experience, but again, will take some education for non-tech staff. Reports run slowly at times, and they do not offer real-time data.

Price: Starts at $25.00 per month for the most basic hosted package (ClickTracks Analyzer); charges a $40.00 set up fee for each additional domain in the account. The software version costs $495.00. They charge for training and consulting, but offer free tutorials and manuals.

It is not really fair to say, "You get what you pay for," because this service is filling its niche. There were many much-publicized problems with it in their beginning, but those have been remedied, and now I would say the "price" makes it a real bargain. I can't say it is enough on its own; I would want a more appealing and broader service, but it makes a good secondary analytics service or companion to another service for those who like the PPC details contained apart from their site details.

Highlights: Great for pay-per-click tracking and reporting. They have a clean layout. Ideal for IT-type users and other techies.

Lowlights: Being IT slanted in their reporting, they are not as appealing to non-technical users. Data is definitely not current and not real-time, so no up-to-the-minute reporting ability with Google Analytics.

They offer good online help information and have exceptional customer support. I found VisiStat to be fresh, innovative, uncomplicated and very easy to use... what I would consider the poster child of "next generation" analytics. It is services like this that will define the future of analytics, and if VisiStat continues to develop as it has, it could easily become a model for analytics to come.

Highlights: As a service geared toward business users of Web traffic data, I was quite impressed with VisiStat's dedication to keep the reports simple and very easy to understand. I like the graphical layout and the departure from the standard graphs and pie charts of many of the other services. I was won over by the live data feed they call a Statcaster™, and their advertising campaign manager (AdCaM™) is an easy and logical way to track advertising online. The individual LinkTracker™ allows you to monitor links (outbound and internal), as well as onsite downloads of all types. VisiStat impressed me with their attentive, dedicated customer service, and the fact that they really listen to their subscribers.

Lowlights: There are several reports that are still in beta versions, but they are functioning and pretty bug free. Enterprise-level e-commerce sites might need more intricately detailed product statistics, but VisiStat makes a solid companion service along side other, more complicated analytics services, and for small and mid-size business and e-commerce sites, they serve very well.

Price: Their pricing is affordable and very competitive, beginning at $19.95 per month, with discounts for quarterly and annual subscriptions.

WebTrends is among the higher priced, and has complex reports. It would not be the service of choice for smaller businesses or analytics novices...or for those who want to go in, get a quick look at their site status, and get out. But for large corporate or e-commerce sites with a marketing department that needs very detailed data, they are a popular choice.

Highlights: Great consideration has been made to provide very specific industry focus within their service packages. For full-on, hard-push, dedicated marketing, their reports provide good detail and valuable reporting. Focused on marketing strategies, they provide a white paper and guide information area with helpful pointers and educational tips.

Lowlights: Many small business users will find the reports overwhelming and a lot of information that is not needed, especially for the price. It is difficult to find pricing information on their site, and demos and tours cannot be accessed without registration first. Frustrating to find answers readily for those on a budget or new to analytics. Also, data is not real-time.

Price: Starts at $35.00 per month for the hosted (on-demand) small business package and $699.00 for the small business software version.

Q & A: with Stephen Oachs of VisiStat.com
Interview by Nick Ezzo

With all the recent interest in Web analytics, it seems as though new companies are emerging every day. One of the most exciting new providers is VisiStat, a San Jose, California-based startup that is redefining how people use Web reporting.

I sat down with Stephen Oachs, founder of VisiStat, to talk about the future of Web analytics, as well as the newly released VisiStat 4.0.

Q. Stephen, what Web analytics market trends have you seen so far this year?

A. Well, after a bit of a rocky start, the Google acquisition of Urchin and the subsequent release of Google Analytics have created a seismic event in the market. Some of the legacy Web analytics companies that previously offered expensive enterprise reporting packages are now faced with a very serious competitor. Google is essentially giving the very same service away free.

Don't get me wrong; all of this is good news for companies like VisiStat that have earned their stripes by toughing it out at the low end of the market, especially where education is a big factor in customer acquisition and retention. And Google, with their fine-tuned marketing machine, has generated a ton of interest in the Web reporting space. People who didn't even know they needed Web reporting are now demanding it. What you have to consider is, Google has everything to gain by offering Web analytics, as they are in the business to sell Pay Per Click ads - but I see it a bit like asking the fox to watch the hen house.

Q. Are you at all concerned about competing in the Web analytics market with titans like Google and WebTrends?

A. Not at all. We let these big players do the hard work of demand creation -- educating people about why Web analytics is so important. Meanwhile, we focus on delivering a valuable service to small- and medium-sized businesses in a way they can use and understand. It's pretty obvious that if the users don't comprehend their reports, they miss the full business benefits. And remember, unlike these other companies, VisiStat has always been focused on one thing - providing rich data as fast as humanly possible, in an easy-to-digest format. From a feature point of view, we provide many unique capabilities, like our exclusive StatCasting™, AdCaM™ and PageAlarm™ technology. These are things that even Google doesn't have yet.

Q. How does VisiStat stack up against enterprise solutions?

A. It's really apples and oranges. Enterprise solutions address a much different business model, and are tailored toward larger companies with educated staff to interpret the information they provide. VisiStat takes a much different approach, both in the data we provide and the means in which we deliver. VisiStat is very much suited for the small to medium business, where often times our customers are single business owners, or only have small staff, thus they do not have the time to become educated to use an enterprise solution, nor can they reasonably afford one.

Some extremely robust enterprise Web analytic products on the market provide very granular information. These services are perfect for the fortune 1000-type companies. VisiStat's mission is to service the rest of the market. There were 18 million new domains registered in 2005 and the small business opportunity on the Internet grows every day. We seek to service those customers, which isn't to say we can't provide analytics for larger companies - we actually work with many large companies and they love the information VisiStat provides. But our focus is strongly on the small business community.

I guess the best way to sum it up is that Web analytics is not a "one-size-fits all" service, therefore, we provide VisiStat Web Analytics side by side with other tracking services. For instance, a marketing group may use VisiStat to monitor visitor traffic, page usage, search engine keyword usage, pay per click campaigns, etc., and the IT people may keep WebTrends in place as it provides excellent information about network and bandwidth usage, dead pages and bots and crawler usage. VisiStat actually complements any other analytics services, allowing all departments in a business to get exactly the information needed for their specific uses.

Q. VisiStat just released VisiStat 4.0. What are the new capabilities associated with the release of this version?

A. Well first, VisiStat 4.0 unveils unique features offered nowhere else, such as WorldMaps, which is a kind of a GPS for Website monitoring. With WorldMaps, users can see the source and volume of visits to their Website from any country around the globe. Second, our users asked us to respond to the dramatic increase in online advertising and e-mail campaigns. So VisiStat 4.0 now offers LinkTracker, a new feature that displays the number of document downloads and other clickable actions available on every page of a Website.

We've also added some security features like Domain Filtering, which uses data authentication to prevent "spoofing," a simple yet insidious trick where hackers simply copy a site's HTML page code and post their own look-alike site. The remaining new features in VisiStat 4.0 are designed to improve the user experience. Friendly Page Naming lets you create and track easy-to-remember page names instead of clumsy URL page descriptors, and QuickNav, a handy little toggle window, lets you jump directly to the VisiStat report you need, when you need it.

Q. Finally, can you offer some insight into where you see the Web Analytics market is headed?

A. I think I can sum it up by saying that there is a vast untapped market that is just beginning to realize the benefits of Web analytics. The Internet continues to evolve - I remember when you had to convince someone why they needed a Website, then why they needed to be listed well in Search Engines, then why they needed their site to function and be a tool; and now this is all common place and businesses are realizing they need to know what's happening on their indispensable Websites. They are starting to treat their online businesses just as they would a brick and mortar, where concepts such as return on investment has been an online mystery.

I think this market will continue to become commoditized. Businesses will require easy to use, real-time information, critical for their online success. The other trend I see is moving away from log-based, time-delayed reports and toward real-time, "as-it-happens" Web reporting. That's a concept we refer to as "information at the speed of business™" and represents a shift in the Internet to Software as a Service (Web 2.0), where Websites perform and operate like their desktop software cousins, but with vast advantages for the consumer.

Q. Stephen, thanks for taking the time to speak with us today.

A. It's been my pleasure.