OMNITURE WEB ANALYTICS / Omniture SiteCatalyst Web analytics is the measurement, collection, analysis and reporting of internet data

for purposes of understanding and optimizing web usage.[1] It is often done without the permission or knowledge of the user, in which case particularly with third party cookies which can be shared between different web sites it can be a breach of privacy. Web analytics is not just a tool for measuring web traffic but can be used as a tool for business and market research, and to assess and improve the effectiveness of a web site. Web analytics applications can also help companies measure the results of traditional print or broadcast advertising campaigns. It helps one to estimate how traffic to a website changes after the launch of a new advertising campaign. Web analytics provides information about the number of visitors to a website and the number of page views.

Visits (or Sessions)

Activity for one visitor default 30 minutes of inactivity also called a visit

(1) Top Referrers *How are people finding your site? *Top Search Phrases

*Top Search Engines

(2) Content Groups * What content are your visitors most interested in? * Top Pages

*Content Groups

(3) Top Paths * Is the navigation through your site effective? * Top Paths Through Site

* Top Destination Paths * Top Exit Pages

(4) Technical stats * Is your site optimized and free of errors? * Dynamic Page Errors

* Server Load Balancing

* Client Errors

(5) Qualified Visits (by product) * Is your site supporting your business objectives? * Defining Qualified Visits

* Qualified Visitor Conversion Ratio

Visual Display of the Tools

Social Media Analytics Video Analytics Web 2.0 Effectiveness Crucial to fast and flexible data analysis Mobile Analytics and Mobile Reporting Allow visualize and understand the flow of traffic through site

Clickstream / Pathing On a Scale

Best Web Analytics Tools Clickstream Analysis Tools 1. 2. 3. 4. Google Analytics (google.com/analytics) Free Yahoo Web Analytics (web.analytics.yahoo.com) Free Omniture Web Analytics Crazy Egg (crazyegg.com) $9-$99/month Competitive Intelligence Tools 5. Compete (compete.com) Prices vary Experimentation and Testing Tools 6. Google Website Optimizer (google.com/websiteoptimizer) Free 7. Optimizely (optimizely.com) - $19-$399/month Voice of Customer Tools 8. Kissinsights from Kiss Metrics (kissinsights.com) Free to $29/month 9. 4Q by iPerceptions (4qsurvey.com) Free 10. ClickTale (clicktale.com) Free to $990 (3 months free on paid plans)

Social Analytics 11. Facebook Insights Free 12. Twitalyzer (twitalyzer.com) Free

Enterprise Analytic Reporting Tools

Google Analytics Omniture Adobe SiteCatalyst WebTrends
Adobe Digital Marketing Suite

Type

Subsidiary Web Analytics Market Research Online Optimization 1996 Adobe SiteCatalyst Adobe SearchCenter+ Adobe Discover Adobe Test&Target Adobe Genesis Adobe Insight Adobe Merchandising Adobe Search&Promote Adobe Survey Adobe Recommendations Adobe DigitalPulse Adobe Scene7 Adobe CQ > 1,000 (2008)[1] Adobe Systems http://www.omniture.com

Industry

Founded

Products

Employees Parent Website

Omniture is an online marketing and web analytics business unit owned by Adobe Systems. The Omniture Business Unit is based in Orem, Utah, with offices worldwide. It serves customers in 75 countries worldwide.

Products

SiteCatalyst, Omniture's software as a service application, offers Web analytics (client-side analytics). SearchCenter+ assists with paid search and content network optimization in systems such as Google's AdWords, Yahoo! Search Marketing, Microsoft Ad Center, and Facebook Ads. DataWarehouse, data warehousing of SiteCatalyst data. Test&Target, A/B and MVT (multi-variate testing), derived from Offermatica[5] Test&Target 1:1, Omniture's main behavioural targeting solution, derived in part from Touch Clarity, drills down to the individual level of testing. Discover, an advanced segmentation tool. Insight, a multichannel segmentation tool (both client-side and server-side analytics). Formerly called Discover on Premise, it was derived from Omniture's Visual Sciences acquisition in 2007. Insight for Retail, an Insight offering geared toward multiple online and offline retail channels. Genesis, a third-party data integration tool (the majority of integrations work with SiteCatalyst). Recommendations offers automated product and content recommendations. SiteSearch, an on-demand enterprise search product. Merchandising, a search and navigation offering for online stores. Publish, for web content management. Survey, to gather visitor sentiment. DigitalPulse, a Web analytics code configuration monitoring tool. VISTA, server-side analytics.

Omniture's latest offerings as of 2010 include some social media tracking capabilities. Major competitors are Rapleaf, WebTrends, Personyze and Eloqua.
SITECATALYST BASICS AND NAVIGATION

How SiteCatalyst collects data SiteCatalyst metrics General interface knowledge Toolbar functionality Report settings, including the Search function

Calendar and dates Report views, including Ranked, Trended, and Improved SiteCatalyst Help

TRAFFIC REPORTS

Site traffic Finding Methods Visitor profile GeoSegmentation Technology Segmentation Custom Insight reports

PATHS REPORTS

ClickMap Pages reports Entries and exits Complete paths Advanced analysis

CONVERSION REPORTS

Metric reports (Purchases, Shopping Cart, Custom Events) Products and Customer Loyalty Campaigns Sales Cycle Finding Methods Visitor Profile Technology Site Path Custom Evar reports

REPORT DISTRIBUTION

Alerts Bookmarks Dashboards Scheduling Bookmarks and Dashboards Sharing Bookmarks and Dashboards Editing and managing Bookmarks and Dashboards DirectAccess

USER TOOLS AND FEATURES

Calculated metrics Calendar events Correlations Subrelations (conversion breakdowns)

Omniture Tool Overview

Omniture Web Analytics

How Omniture can help: Omniture provides detailed solutions for analytics data capture, reporting, analysis and optimization with multi channel integration capability. Omniture is On-Demand (SaaS) and limits to page tagging method of data collection. With a recent acquisition from Adobe resulting in huge investments towards development of Site Catalyst 15, Omniture has offered, advanced and more integrated analytic solutions by targeting real time segmentation and powerful interface. Market Share: Omniture is leading enterprise analytical suite for various industrial domains

Tools Omniture WebTrends Omniture is an Online Marketing Suitea combination of Internet marketing services and solutions which empowers marketers to use customer insight to optimize interactions, creating more personalized, relevant customer experiences while also maximizing their marketing spend. Data Captured Client Side Analytics / Server Side Analytics Data Warehouse Usability Testing Data Tools / Products SiteCatalyst, Omniture's software as a service application, Insight, a multichannel segmentation tool(Formerly called Discover on Premise), Vista, DigitalPulse. Data warehousing of SiteCatalyst data. Test&Target A/B and MVT (multi-variate testing) Data derived in part from Offermatica and Touch Clarity, Publish, for web content management. Test&Target 1:1, Omniture's main behavioural targeting solution, drills down to the individual level of testing, Discover, an advanced segmentation tool, Survey, to gather visitor sentiment. Genesis, a third-party data integration tool (the majority of integrations work with SiteCatalyst), Insight for Retail, an Insight offering geared toward multiple online and offline retail channels, SearchCenter+ assists with content network optimization for systems such as Google's AdWords, YSM, MS Ad central and Facebook Ads

User behavioural Data

Marketing Channel Data

Overview
Omniture SiteCatalyst has long been a major player in the analytics market, meeting the needs for many large, corporate clients. The Omniture rely on the standard JavaScript/Image beacon methods to measure web traffic. In short, each time a page is loaded, a piece of JavaScript builds an image request that is sent to a data-gathering server. The image request consists of query parameters with data about the page view. The query parameters are then parsed by the analytics applications and input as data into the appropriate traffic reports.

Cost
The Omniture SiteCatalyst application is extremely robust, providing expansive and expandable measurement capabilities, but such features do not come cheap. It is not uncommon for corporate clients to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars per year to gain access to the Omniture SiteCatalyst system.

Dashboards / Customized Reports

SiteCatalyst provide extensive capabilities for custom reporting and automated reports. In each of the applications, users can easily create and download customized reports which show traffic data alongside other important metrics. Reports can be downloaded from all systems, and automated emails can be scheduled to send reports in numerous formats. Omniture SiteCatalyst allows for emailing reports in Excel, PDF, HTML, and Word. When downloading reports, all of the same options are available except HTML. Omniture SiteCatalyst is able to schedule hourly reports. Omniture also has Data Extract functionality which enables delivery of an unformatted report in .csv format for very large data requests. The caveat to Omnitures custom report capability is that during periods of very heavy traffic, delivery of automated reports may be delayed. In my experience, some reports may fail altogether during periods of heavy traffic. Advantage: Omniture SiteCatalyst* *Omniture gets the edge because of the expanded capability for hourly scheduled reports.

Application Support
Omniture relies heavily on a support network known as Omniture Client Care for answering support requests and enabling additional features. Included with a contract are supported users, those allowed to contact Omniture Client Care. Omniture also has a Twitter account for support that is extremely helpful and responsive. With Omniture Client Care, a supported user can get immediate access to personal support using the 24 hour support line. Advantage: Omniture SiteCatalyst

User & Access Management

Omniture SiteCatalyst provides extremely robust user management tools, allowing administrators to assign access at many different levels. All contact information is within the Administrators interface, and passwords can be reset easily. Access to reports is setup using Groups in SiteCatalyst. Groups are granted various privileges, and one or more report suites can be assigned to individual groups. This level of organization can be both helpful and cumbersome, depending on circumstance. Advantage: Omniture SiteCatalyst

Traffic Filtering
In Omniture traffic is filtered by IP address or a range of IP addresses. The Omniture SiteCatalyst filtering options are sufficient for most website needs.

Data Importing
Known within the SiteCatalyst system as Data Sources, Omniture allows administrators to import data from various different sources, provided that the data is formatted correctly. As data cannot be removed from the system, there is inherent risk associated with such capability. Example usages of this feature include importing newsletter information to correlate with subsequent page views, as well as importing video usage data or mobile traffic (if not already tracked in SiteCatalyst). Advantage: Omniture SiteCatalyst

Rollup / Multi-Suiting
The ability to easily aggregate and analyze traffic across multiple websites is a very important consideration for corporate clients who must administer many different sites. There are two different methods that can accomplish this task: Rollup Accounts andMulti-Suiting (double/multi-tagging). The ease with which aggregate data can be analyzed is also an important consideration. Omniture SiteCatalyst provides features for both options for aggregating multi-site data. Via multi-suiting, SiteCatalyst tracking code can be configured to report data to more than one website profile (report suite.) Doing so allows SiteCatalyst to track overall page views across all tagged sites, determine unique visitors [not limited to one domain], and perform drill-down correlations for various traffic segments. The disadvantages to such an implementation are that each additional account ID that is tracked results in an additional server call to Omniture, and subsequently greater overall cost. The alternative to multi-suiting in SiteCatalyst is to use rollup accounts. In Omniture, rollup accounts can be configured to report many of the same basic metrics as standard single-site reports, however there are a couple of significant limitations:

Correlations cannot be set up to report on specific traffic segments, a feature that is possible in standard (non-rollup) report suites. Data in Omniture rollup reports is always delayed approx. 2 days, as Omniture simply does not have the ability to aggregate data from all accounts in real-time.

Segmenting / Correlations
Segmenting data, called correlating in SiteCatalyst, is a way to break down two types of data to perform in-depth analysis of user visits. An example of segmenting would be to find out how many users referred by Yahoo.com viewed the site for more than 10 seconds. Omniture SiteCatalyst has the ability to perform correlations, however each must be manually set up, and all data is not retroactive within the SiteCatalyst system. Each report suite in Omniture also has a limited number of correlations available, depending on your contract. Omniture has a second product called DataWarehouse that allows for many different levels of segmenting and correlations. While this data is retroactive for everything except newly added custom variables, reports can take up to 72 hours to process. DataWarehouse must be added to an Omniture contract before it can be accessed.

System & Account Limitations

Omniture
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Users The Omniture contract dictates how many user logins are available for an account, and for large corporate clients it can be very easy to hit this limit. Correlations Each non-rollup report suite in Omniture has a limited number of correlations. A correlation in Omniture is a way to tie two variables together for further breakdowns. Rollup report suites cannot have any correlations. Variable Limits (props, evars, events) Limits are in place for Omniture custom variables (limits are per report suite). (Note: These limits may vary by contract): s.prop variables: 50 s.eVar (custom conversion,campaign) variables: 50 Event variables (custom event tracking): 20 Others A variety of other standard limitations exist within the Omniture system and contract, though I have found that most others do not negatively affect standard reporting capabilities.

Application Performance
The two most noticeable points of delay in SiteCatalyst are report generation and the total clicks to reach a report.

Custom Variable / Event / Link Tracking

With Omniture SiteCatalyst, tracking code can be configured to track multiple different types of variables (listed previously in the Account Limitations section.) This ability makes it possible to break down traffic metrics and dimensions by various other custom metrics. Also available in SiteCatalyst is the ability to perform custom event and link tracking, both of which become useful when tracking actions that do not necessarily refresh a page or lead to a page that has tracking installed.

Site Overlay Tools

Omniture SiteCatalyst have site overlay tools that can be used for viewing content popularity relative to surrounding items. Such tools are very useful for analyzing the effectiveness of ad positions, as well as user focus based on content placement. Omnitures site overlay feature is called ClickMap, and using the tool requires that a user download the installation file to their computer and install the application in the browser. One ongoing issue with ClickMap is that retrieving data for date ranges larger than one day can often take a very long time or time out completely. Compatibility has also been an issue with Omniture ClickMap, as new browser releases often disrupt the tools ability to accurately portray site overlays. Nonetheless, ClickMap is an effective way for web editors to view content popularity. Advantage: Omniture SiteCatalyst* Omnitures product has the advantage in this criteria simply for being around longer and proven effective.

Data Export
One very useful tool that is available from Omniture is the ExcelClient plugin for Microsoft Excel. With the tool, Omniture users can download data directly into Excel for analysis. This tool has proven to be very useful for creating custom-formatted reports, as well as running a standard report across multiple websites in a short period of time. Omniture also has a new API that can be used for exporting data. Advantage: Omniture SiteCatalyst

Tracking Tag Performance

In general, SiteCatalyst tags do not appear to have a significant negative affect on page performance. From testing with Gomez tools, the most obvious difference is that the Google tags appear to be much more consistent and reliable than Omniture tags. Omniture SiteCatalyst Tag:

Omniture Beacon Performance

The average response time, measured over a 3 week period is Omnitures 0.061 seconds.

Ads / Conversion / Goal Tracking

Omniture has an application known as SearchCenter which allows for integration with Google Adwords (and other PPC providers), however usage of this tool is at additional cost in the Omniture contract. Conversion tracking can be enabled in the Omniture interface, though the process within SiteCatalyst is much more tedious and confusing than in Google.

Criticism
Critics have accused Omniture of attempting to hide the fact they are collecting data.[10] Critics claim they do this by sending the information to a domain name that looks and sounds similar to an IP address used to connect to devices on the local network and not the Internet. This has led to speculation that the domain name is used to trick users or firewall rules.[11] Omniture's SiteCatalyst and SearchCenter products use the 2o7.net domain name.[12] Omniture collects data from Apple[10] and Adobe, who use Omniture to collect usage statistics across their products.[11] It is possible to opt-out of the Omniture data-collection system, and to block the tracking.[12]