I was browsing some web analyst job postings to see the current market demands. I saw job postings with requirement of the web analyst to have knowledge of Omniture, Google Analytics, Coremetrics, and WebTrends. Folks, it’s not possible for one analyst to have access to more than two platforms at once. No organization can afford that!
When should I switch web analytics platforms?
The truth is, the answer has less to do with your platform and more to do with your analyst. A great analyst can do a lot with a free web analytics platform such as Google Analytics. Organizations should only consider switching web analytics platforms when you change analysts, or you run into business limitations with your current platform.
Changing platforms is costly
- Implementation can take between 2 weeks to 6 months
- Web analytics consultants are expensive
- Data quality control takes time (matching old data to new data)
- Tracking of all domains, conversions and transactions
- Connecting platform API to external vendors (AdWords, DoubleClick, ExactTarget, Survey, Optimizely)
How can you decide between Omniture (Adobe Marketing Cloud), WebTrends, Google Analytics Enterprise, or IBM Coremetrics?
First, get a sales and technical person from each vendor to present the benefits of their system. Then, your organization needs to sit down with your analyst and go over all of your business goals and do a FOSE analysis.
Flexibility – is the system flexible to your business goals.
Openness – does the system have the capability to allow API from other important vendors.
Sustainability – is there support from the web analytics platform vendor to sustain all your data needs.
Extensibility – can the system support your future organizational goals, grow with your organization, and offer easy solutions to your needs.
Conclusion
A considerable amount of my web analytics experience has been switching vendor platforms. This decision needs to be considered very carefully as there is loss of analysis time in the process, which is a loss of insight, and loss of opportunity. However, if you are running out of variables with your current system, perhaps it is time to look into other web analytics platforms.
Related posts: Case Study: Ecommerce store optimization with Google Analytics Segmentation, Goal of Analytics, Big Data vs. Small Data