You could use it in a very similar way to Visual Sciences. Practically all the work with Instadia was done on the vendor side backend (filtering, report set-up, segmentation etc). Once your (very simple) tags were implemented on the site, you pretty much had it all. All you needed to do was then use the Instadia ASP system to find and get what you wanted, you didn’t need to go back and add tags to pages if you wanted to do something new. It is/was a web analytics system designed as web analytics systems should all have been designed from the first time someone thought of using Javascript and an ASP server.

Now when Omniture bought Instadia I was immediately worried because my first reaction was that they will absorb the system so that everyone moves to Site Catalyst. While Instadia is still available to existing clients for the next year the idea is that everyone will move over to SC eventually.

When I questioned Omniture directly the answer was that the technology is to be discontinued. This is a real shame. Omniture’s technology is simply not as good as Instadia’s was from the respect that much of the data collection relies on the Omniture tags. It means that tagging for specialised and custom reporting becomes an issue. While this is not that important for smaller companies, often, when you’re talking about large enterprises this is a huge issue and a big cost.

In my opinion, if Omniture had any sense they would develop their next release based on Instadia’s data collection method and backend, not discontinue the system. They could then use Site Catalyst as a superior front end for Instadia but still allow people like us to develop very powerful filtering and segmentation into the SC suite. You’re very welcome to pass this onto anyone you know at Omniture to get their comments as I’m sure they will defend their stance, however they will probably take the view that the SC system is currently far more advanced than Instadia.

It is much stronger from the eye candy point of view and the integration with other systems SC has is impressive, BUT, this integration would be even more useful with Instadia’s backend and data collection method.

I think they have invested too much into SC to change it and their policy therefore is to continue with what is not an ideal way to collect data.

I won’t mention names but when I raised this with an ex-Instadia guy now working for Omniture, he was equally as frustrated as I was.

Omniture purely and simply have bought Instadia for the market share and the very good people they have gotten as a result of the acquisition in Europe.

I am not criticising Omniture for the acquisition, i think it was the smartest move they could’ve made. I do however feel they are wasting the potential of the Instadia tool.

One of the big problems with web analytics tools today is the amount of deployment work required. It sometimes takes months. With Instadia it typically took a day to tag everything.

We did a test to get some very advanced KPI’s reported in both Instadia and another system (lets call it system b) with a similar data collection method to Omniture. Instadia far outperformed it. It took 6 weeks just to implement the KPI’s on system b. It took 1 day with Instadia to track the entire site correctly and get the custom KPI’s.

Anyway rant over! ;o)

Regards Unica. I have not enough experience to comment. I’ve never seen or heard them at any trade events which I would expect to see a web analytics vendor therefore have not investigated them too deeply though they do look like a contender due to their support structure.

Regards my taking years to implement comment. That is misleading. What I really meant is it might take years to get a policy change that would make such a system effective. Implentation wouldn’t take long at all, but getting people to use it multi channel and effectively would.

I tried for 9 months with one company to get them to move to a system I thought perfect for their needs and had backing with many of my clients in that company but still face too many internal barriers. I will discuss that more with you in Helsinki/Stockholm (or offline) which I am also looking forward too.

I also am very interested in your comments about “taking years to implement” and requiring “a massive policy shift” since at least one vendor in the WA marketplace has pinned their future to being “Enterprise” class and being deployed broadly throughout the organization across multiple channels. Do you have any feelings about the likelihood of short- and long-term issues this vendor may face (Hint: They’re your vendor!)

Anyway, thanks for the (belated) comments and I very much look forward to hanging out with you in Helsinki and Stockholm in September!

The client I mean is truly global - I won’t mention the name but it is one of the biggest brands in the world, constantly in the top 6 globally. You have internal politics, you have hundreds of individual contries and their local vendors to work with, you have multiple client contacts to keep happy, multiple content delivery systems to work with, multiple campaigns to organise reporting for and many, many, many challenges and hurdles to face with data integrity and data presentation. This is before you can even start analysis.

You know what I use primarily to compile the data and put it into a presentable form? Excel and Powerpoint.

Yes, the only true enterprise solution used by everyone in my clients organisation is MS Office.

I have multiple data streams to cope with. Google analytics, HBX, Instadia (now Omniture) Google Adwords, MSN, Yahoo, Dart,
Various (and I mean hundreds) of individual banner campaigns and other offline data to cope with.

Currently there are two I would say enterprise analytics tools with powerful web analytics built in. SAS and Visual Sciences.

Actually getting my clients corporate wide adoption of either of these systems would in the current environment take years.

All of the other tools I have seen (now that Omniture has effectively removed the potential challenge to VS and SAS by acquiring and destroying the Instadia system - though even they used excel as an output source for custom reports) have flaws in compiling all data sources and making the reports completely customizable. Therefore I am still (9 years into my web analytics experience) using excel and powerpoint to do enterprise level reporting and analysis.

Nearly all of the web analytic tools provide some level of intergration with excel. This to me speaks volumes about “Enterprise class analytics”.

Unless you have a corporate wide data collection/compilation and processing solution which allows you to completely customize reports *AND* you have a corporate wide process which means the whole enterprise uses the platform, then you don’t have an enterprise class data analytics solution.

SAS and Visual sciences are two that can do this, though the level of training and support required for both systems would mean they would be wasted on most of my clients and the one that could use a tool like this would need a massive policy shift.

So I’d largely agree with Eric that the term Enterprise needs removing from nearly all of the web analytics tools currently available.

I also agree with Marianina that most companies (even enterprises) are going to need to take things in smaller bites to begin with, until that is they have the understanding of what they can get from their euros/dollars.

This is why web analytics tools are successful at the moment and why most vendors are moving toward the ASP integration model so that at least data can be easier to compile.

I don’t expect the landscape to change that much in the next couple of years either, though it is hard to say what might happen in the mid/long term.

http://blog.webanalyticsdemystified.com/weblog/category/engagement/page/3/

Bhupendra: Thanks again for your comments and for the blog post!

This time I have written a blog entry on this subject and I would like to link this discussion to my blog.

http://analyticsbhups.blogspot.com/2007/06/on-enterprise-web-analytics-tools.html

I could actually find much relevance on the points raised by all three gurus of Web analytics (Eric, Judah and Avinash), and I ended up taking a mid-way. Let us take the discussion forward and give a meaningful conclusion that paves way for better and enlarged Web Analytics area.

Cheers,
Bhupendra

I do see this as a battle - because I am still persuading clients to move away from “show me the stats!!” - but it is happening and I’m not going to stop trying. And along the way, I have been and will continue to keep adapting and using the right solution for that specific client’s needs - be that Netinsight/VS/Clicktracks/GA or whatever that might be.

May the challenge continue!
Marianina

As an example: Is Google Analytics “Enterprise Class” or not? On one hand they largely only provide support through partners, have no APIs, no non-web reporting infrastructure, no ability to import metadata or lookup tables, no datawarehouse functionality, or any advanced visitor segmentation capabilities.

On the other hand, I can see them on 5% of the Fortune 1,000 sites (Chevron, GE, McKesson, Dell, and DuPont).

If we didn’t have to debate whether they were “Enterprise Class” or not, we could simply say, “Wow, Google Analytics is on 5% of the Fortune 1,000, 10% of the Top 100 domains, and 9% of the Top 1,000 domains (both by Unique Visitors) … how cool is that?”

Yeah, we’re splitting hairs to be sure, but I would much rather see an assessment of web analytics vendors derived from a clear set of criteria deemed critical to businesses at different stages in their analytical evolution than an arbitrary list of “Enterprise Class” vendors.

I know that Megan Burns is writing the Forrester Wave for web analytics vendors right now. Hopefully Megan/FORR will weigh in with something similar to the assessment I’ve described.

Thank you for challenging me!