ben robison
when only more words will do
Subscribe to RSSGoogle Analytics vs. Omniture SiteCatalyst
I know I’ve written about this before, but as I become more familiar with the different products, I continue to find things that I think are important. There is one main point that I’d like to hit with this post and that is report customization.
Google Analytics: minimal customization allowed
At first glance, Google Analytics appears to offer some very similar reports to SiteCatalyst. With the exception of the Commerce section of SiteCatalyst, Google offers very similar reports and data. And while both products allow you to change the date range, Google does not offer any customization beyond that.
Omniture SiteCatalyst: everything is customizeable
I may be overstating this a bit, but only slightly. Omniture allows you to easily create filters to filter through your data as well as to define your own metrics and have your reports generated in terms of your new metrics. These calculated metrics are based on other standard metrics and applies some math in the analysis. The standard metrics can be on a report-specific basis or a totals basis, so the percentages can be calculated from all metrics across the site or on a line item basis.
This one additional capability that Omniture provides might make it worth the price tag. The word on the street is that Omniture won’t be worth your time unless you’re paying them over $500 a month. And since Omniture charges you by the page view, you’re looking at some serious traffic.
You should read my most recent posting (http://jeffrsnbgh.blogspot.com/2007/03/omnitures-sitecatalyst.html) on some of my thoughts.
Omniture’s SiteCatalyst is a fabulous product, but I see a couple areas where I wish it could improve. Seperating the three categories and not allowing much data sharing between them is pretty frustrating.
Omniture SiteCatalyst is a fabulous tool, BUT:
1. It comes with several standard segmentation options which unfortunately are NOT available for all reports. Getting Omniture to enable missing segmentation options for certain reports is HELL
2. SiteCatalyst is EXTREMELY buggy, even though we’re at v13.5 now already. Setting up calculated metrics is HELL, because 6/10 times you’ll encounter a problem (usually bug), which means you’ll have to spend countless hours with Omniture engineers to try and get them to fix bugs within a reasonable amount of time
3. Despite its rapid growth over the past couple of years, it seems Omniture is not investing in resources and has become sluggish, unreliable and extremely difficult to work with. Their solution of hiring “Omniture-approved consultants” is often not helpful, because thanks to SiteCatalyst’s complexity there are a LOT of problems that occur and only the very experienced consultants will know what to do with your problems from the get go (rare to find).
Unless you really need a tool with lots of bells and whistles do yourself a favour and start with Google Analytics!
I’ll agree that a GA implementation is very simple, but the out-of-the-box implementation of SC is just as simple. It’s when you start to get into all the customized reporting areas that things get more complex.
To your last point though, that’s very fair. Use GA to get your toe in the water and when your needs outgrow it or you start to ask questions that it can’t answer, then it might be time to move on to something else.