Coffee, Sun & Technology

A month doesn’t go by without a Marketing Manager, Director or even VP asking me if they should or should not use Google Analytics on their retail or content site. After the initial wave of sites which moved to Google Analytics when it was made free in 2005, there seems to be a new wave of larger sites now wondering what to do.

Whether this is part of the normal Web analytics space consolidation cycle, or simply the “question du jour” remains to be seen. But I think there is a bigger story here. The chasm is widening between eMarketers on one side, and Web analysts on the other. Web analytics tools keep gettting more and more complicated, to the point where some of the folks out there are simply asking the question: “Can we go back to a tool that’s less complicated?”.

So my personal opinion on the matter is: In 99% of the cases, more reports won’t help. In 99% of the cases, less will be more, and therefore, and yes, you should try Google Analytics.

Usually at that time of the dicussion I get a list of objections, which are:

Objection 1 (most common): We don’t want Google to have access to our site data. We spend ridiculous amounts of money with them, and we are afraid of them using this information against us.

Answer: Google’s got a good track record for business integrity and given their dominant position, I think this is a low risk. In fact, what information could they possibly use, and for what reason? Yes, they could figure out where you’re also buying your clicks from, and the volumes. Then decide to discount or not discount your click costs based on the information. But would that make a huge difference to them anyways? They own the SEM market, and pretty much have all the pricing power they want already.

Objection 2: Google Analytics’ too simple for our business needs.

Answer: While it’s possible that Google Analytics might not meet all your business requirements, it’s highly unlikely. For one, the GA has a pretty competitive featureset. But most importantm, this goes back to the classic mistake buyers make when evaluating Web analytics vendors: i.e. picking the tool which has the most reports and the flashiest UI’s — and ignoring the most important part of the Web analytics equation: people. It’s the people who will make your analytics investment work, not the tools.

Objection 3: Google doesn’t have support.

Answer: I don’t have any information on this. But I’ve used GA for the last 3-4 years now and I haven’t seen many bugs lately (they’ve been very good fixing their initial problems).

Objection 4: Google doesn’t have professional services.

Answer: They don’t but they have certified professional. And if you’re looking for Web analytics services, there are plenty of Web analytics consulting boutiques out there. I have too many friends in this industry to start a list here — but if you’re looking for names, drop me an email and I’ll help you.

Objection 5 (hot question these days): Should we run them side by side with Omniture?

Answer: IT folks will argue that having Omniture and GA side by side will slow down the page (you’re adding to the page load with another JS that’s typically 15-20KB). I think that’s a fair statement. I frequently see pages waiting for the google-analytics.com server response (typically people running multiple analytics technologies), which impacts page performance but also the accuracy of your reports. On the other hand, the average page size is now over 200KB, and another Web analytics tag certainly isn’t going to all of the sudden kill your site.

And my final words of wisdom… Everybody that’s been in this industry long enough knows that people are the critical success factor in any Web analytics project. My recommendation is to under-invest in tools, over-invest in people. That’s what’s going to make it all work.

Now that I’ve cleared this question, can you ask me about my new video commerce startup instead next time we meet at a cocktail ?