Choosing a decent analytics solution is a tricky business and it’s often hard for non-experts to understand the different options offered by vendors let alone the implications for actually setting up the software.
Perhaps this is the reason so many companies choose to use a free service such as Google Analytics rather than a more complex and powerful paid system.
Google has commissioned Forrester Research to help understand the key trends in enterprise web analytics. The “Appraising Your Investment in Enterprise Web Analytics” study shows what large companies want from an enterprise solution and how they are thinking about their web analytics decisions.
Key findings
- 53% currently use a free solution as their primary Web analytics tool
- 66% of people who pay for analytics would consider switching to free
- 52% fail to effectively use more than half of the capabilities offered by their tools
The most interesting thing for me is that the most important thing people want in their analytics solution is real time reporting and that’s pretty much the only thing that Google Analytics is lacking. Hopefully they will take notice of their own report and get it added!
Patrick Altoft is Director of Search at Leeds based digital & SEO agency Branded3. Patrick also runs Blogstorm.You can get our blog posts delivered for free by email every day - simply add your email address to the box below or alternatively grab the RSS feed.
{ 6 comments… read them below or add one }
Great post, just moved upto Leeds recently
There are reasons why Google Analytics fails on that list – although typically it excels in many others it fails miserably on many aspects of the list. Conversion attribution – last click, I really prefer the ability to apportion blame to a few sources.
Oddly I would say a lot of the list is poor for Google Analytics and yet despite that I would say that Google Analytics is actually the better solution for 95% of companies who simply want access to actionable analytics, (with the exception of ClickTracks and CoreMetics) – I would say getting usable information is where Google wins.
also interesting that ‘real-time reporting’ is probably the least useful feature of the whole list (in terms of improving what you’re doing), yet most requested!
Some great stuff on there that I hope they add:
Predictive
OLAP
Alerts
Better import/export
dan
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Thanks for sharing the information and the analytics chart here.
More comments from tag44I’m convinced there is something in the air. I was thinking just this morning that real time reporting is where Google must be heading.
And I wonder whether the lessons they will learn from the way real-time results in Google Wave operate will help them manage reporting in Analytics.
Interesting results from the survey. I would put site overlay and custom segmentation above real-time reporting. I would ask what use ‘real-time’ results are if they don’t give you the information you want?
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I’ve always wondered what analytics is best to go with. I have tried a few and it seems like I like pieces of each one. I would like opinions on what other people are using and what stats they like best.
More comments from BlindAcreMediaUp to this day I haven’t seen another analytic reporting program that would be able to match Google Analytics.
Yes, theres so many features of Google Analytics that I’ve never used so i guess i’m in that 52%
And yes it does lack real time and also a fancy GUI but clearly, Google has met all my needs in terms of accurate results.
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