OX2 Web Analytics Blog

Yesterday, during the Emetrics Summit in London we were given the opportunity to ask questions to a panel of Web Analytics vendors that covered most of the top players of the Industry. Jim called it the ‘Vendors Variety Hour‘. It was a pity that Ian Thomas could not participate as Microsoft hasn’t yet launched Gatineau 😉 (looking forward to see you in the panel next year).

From left to right we had:
– SAS – Omniture – ClickTracks – WebSideStory (VS) – Unica – WebTrends – IndexTools – Google

Last year during the Emetrics there was a question ‘Vendors name one thing you do better than WebTrends‘. This year I decided to bring again the question, but with a twist ;-):
‘Vendors, what would be your unique selling proposition?‘ And the twist was for Avinash that was actively representing Google: ‘Avinash you cannot say that GA USP is it’s free‘.

The answers to the question were:

SAS: Instant deployment of Business Intelligence on an enterprise wide level.

Omniture: Online Optimization (cf. Touch Clarity)

ClickTracks: Web Analytics that Sucks Less (internal mantra). The iPod of Web Analytics

WebSideStory: Moving away from Web Analytics –> Customer Analytics (speaking about Visual Sciences)

Unica: Integrable back-end & drag&drop interface.

WebTrends: We are Marketing. Our relational Database allows a consolidated customer view.

IndexTools: Price, we give all our features for less.

Google Analytics: Democratized data. Google Adwords & Search Engine Marketing integration.

There were also other very interesting questions as (sorry if they are not in the same words, this is from memory):

• Vendors, as Google analytics is a free tool that does a very decent job, why should I pay you to get a Web Analytics product?
• Vendors, help me convince my CEO!
• Vendors, how mush does it cost? You can read their answers to this question in the Yahoo Groups.
• Vendors, how long does it takes to get your first report?
• Vendors, regarding UI (User Interface), what features/functionality do you have to ease the access to your tool?

And of course, someone was looking for the magic pill 😉 (the silver bullet):

• Vendors, imagine that a Genie came out of a lamp and could give you something instantly, it can be a feature for example. What would that be?

Regarding this last question I just wanted to share with you ClickTracks (Recognised by the community as the friendliest vendor ;-)) John Marshall‘s answer: Peace in the Middle-East!

I leave you with these words, and please if you think of any other questions, comment them hereunder, I’ll try to convince Jim to organise the same format in California ;-), so don’t hesitate to attend, it’s not yet sold out!

I wanted to congratulate the members of the panel for their courage and willingness to answer questions that were for some of them little tough 😉

Have a nice day,

René

P.S. Jim, if you have a picture of the panel, could you please send it? I’ll update the post with the picture. (Done, thank you Jim ;-))

This entry was posted on March 31, 2007 at 10:08 am and is filed under About us, eMetrics, Emetrics Summit London 2007, Events, Google Analytics, Web Analytics, Web Analytics Industry News, WebTrends. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.