November/December 2008

Dining at the "All You Can Eat" Web Analytics Buffet

If you ever doubted that technology innovation and business competition is a good thing, look no further 

than the rapidly evolving web analytics industry. Two leading products, both offered by search engines, are offering unbelievable functionality for a price that's right for this economy's shrinking budgets - $0. These products provide critical data on website performance that can have a direct impact on the bottom line.

For the past four years, we've provided our clients with IndexTools web analytics software, which has allowed us to measure the results of our search marketing campaigns, as well as their other marketing efforts. IndexTools was bought earlier this year by Yahoo and has been renamed Yahoo Web Analytics. While its chief competitor, Google Analytics, offers an amazing array of features, Yahoo Web Analytics does offer at least one advantage that Google Analytics doesn't.

Yahoo Web Analytics can capture the name of the person filling out a contact form. This is critical information for our B2B clients who often have difficulty in closing the tracking gap between leads and offline sales. By capturing names in Yahoo Web Analytics' system, our clients can take a list of new customers and find each customer's analytics to see where their visit originated. For example, are offline sales more likely to be generated by site visitors who used a search engine or followed another kind of link? Which search engine did each one use? Which search term? Did they click on a paid or organic listing? What did we spend for their click and what's the ROI for that particular customer? This is critical information that you can see in Google Analytics on a macro level, but not a micro (individual) level.

That said, Google Analytics has poured much of their considerable resources into continually improving their product. There are four features that have us especially excited:

Motion Charts allow you to analyze the data of your choice in five dimensions, including across time. You've got to see this to believe it - here's their video showing how it works (<3 minutes).

Site Overlays will show a page from your site with information overlaid on each link to show how many site visitors clicked on each link, converted, and how much revenue was generated. (See a screen shot.)

Funnel Visualization will show a visual of how many visitors went all the way through the conversion/sales funnel on your site, how many dropped out along the way, where they dropped out and where they went. (Again, see a screen shot.)

Website Optimizer will allow you to test different landing pages so as to generate the most conversions possible (more info).

There are so many advantages to both Yahoo Web Analytics and Google Analytics that we are starting to recommend that our clients use both of them (there's no negative effect with running them both on a site at the same time). It's hard to believe that the search engines give away these products, but it's in their best interests for companies who are also pay-per-click advertisers to have access to these kinds of tools. The more finely honed their campaigns are, the more online sales they make, and the more money these advertisers can afford to pour back into their pay-per-click campaigns.

As sophisticated as these no charge web analytics tools are, they still may not be enough for large enterprises with complex sites needing hard core data. Companies that specialize in web analytics (and actually sell their products - imagine that!) include WebTrends, Omniture, Coremetrics, Lyris HQ, Unica, and more. These companies are starting to fold in other online marketing services, such as email marketing, content management, bid management, CRM and more. They're becoming more service oriented and more "plug and play," with dedicated account reps to consult with you about your analytics needs, ensure the product is installed and working correctly, and help you analyze the resulting data.

Don't underestimate the value of those services. Install the code incorrectly for Yahoo Web Analytics, Google Analytics, or any product, and you'll be collecting inaccurate data. Garbage in, garbage out. And whatever information you failed to capture will be gone forever - there's no way to go back in time to retrieve it.

Keep in mind thatgathering accurate data is only the first step - you've got to determine which metrics are the most meaningful to your company and its goals, how to analyze the data, and what to change in your business to make those metrics move in the right direction over time. If you don't have web analytics consulting capabilities in-house, you may want to consider outsourcing it.

In this season of Thanksgiving, one of the many, many things we're grateful for is the ability to do such sophisticated measurement and analysis of our clients' websites, for only the cost of our time. If you haven't already, pull up a chair to the buffet of web analytics software and gorge yourself on plentiful and tasty data.

About Us

Prominent Placement, Inc., is a full-service, award-winning search engine marketing firm based in Atlanta, GA, serving clients throughout the US since 2001. We provide strategic search marketing solutions, delivering efficiencies that traditional marketing channels can't touch, with a level of client service that can't be matched. We manage the entire SEM process, so that businesses can focus on what they do best. Because every business is unique, so are the recommendations we make, backed by hard numbers that give decision makers the confidence and knowledge they need to make smarter decisions.

For more information, visit our website or call 888.SEM.MKTR.

Have a Wonderful Thanksgiving!

Matt has launched a web analytics consultancy.