Thanks for asking!
As mentioned in the comments below, the most recent information
resource for Web Analytics is the Aberdeen Group report, "Web
Analytics: Making Business Sense of Online Behavior." The report
profiles 47 Web Analytics providers. As noted, the full report is only
available for a fee.
Aberdeen Group
Web Analytics: Making Business Sense of Online Behavior, by Guy Creese
and Alex Veytsel, June, 2002
http://www.aberdeen.com/ab_company/hottopics/webanalytics2002/default.htm
Fortunately, a recent new article by ASP News referenced this report,
and provides a bit of additional information.
"ASPs [Application Service Providers] significantly increased their
slice of the Web analytics market in 2001, capturing 22 percent of the
$372 million market, which is up from 13 percent over the previous
year."
"Of the 47 solution providers profiled in the Aberdeen report, "at
least 12 have ASP versions," Creese said. WebSideStory, one of the
first Web analytics ASPs, continues to be the market leader for hosted
software, but the momentum is not in the San Diego-based ASP's favor.
"It's losing its lead," Creese told ASPnews. Currently, WebSideStory
has 17 percent of the market, but WhiteCross and DigiMine now each has
9 percent. (Two years ago Aberdeen reported that WebSideStory's market
share was 35 percent.)"
ASP News
Web Analytics ASPs Set to Soar, by Dan Muse, June 3, 2002
http://www.aspnews.com/news/article/0,2350,4191_1183081,00.html
- - -
WebSideStory notes the Aberdeen report accolade:
WebSideStory Recognized as No. 1 Web Analytics Service Provider by
Aberdeen Group. For the second year in a row, the Aberdeen Group cites
WebSideStory as the top vendor for outsourced Web analytics - the
fastest-growing segment of the market.
WebSideStory’s HitBox family of services helps businesses profit from
their online presence by providing fast answers to questions such as:
What is the dollar-value return on investment of my marketing
campaigns? Which visitor segments are most likely to convert to
customers? What are the bottlenecks in my purchase path? Where do my
most profitable customers come from? And what content, products and
services do visitors prefer? Each month, the company analyzes more
than 30 billion page views for its customers. Select WebSideStory
customers include Adobe, American Express, British Airways, CBS
SportsLine.com, Intel, Northwestern Airlines, QVC, Qwest, Skechers,
Taylor Made- addidas Golf, and Ziff-Davis.
WebSideStory
Press Release, June 5, 2002
http://websidestory.com/cgi-bin/wss.cgi?corporate&news&press_2_183
Hitbox site analytics solutions include products and services at
several levels. You'll find the product overview at:
Hitbox Product Overview
http://websidestory.com/cgi-bin/wss.cgi?corporate&products&services_overview
Each available service described below is linked from the Overview
report.
Enterprise Solutions:
"HitBox® Enterprise | Cisco. The Walt Disney Internet Group.
SportsLine.com. Some of the world's largest companies have embraced
HitBox Enterprise's best-of-breed e-business intelligence service.
Better, faster, and easier to use than the competition, HitBox
Enterprise can help any business dramatically improve its return on
investment in the Internet."
"HitBox® Commerce | By combining superior clickstream visitor analysis
with purchasing activity, HitBox Commerce helps online retailers find
out where their customers come from and what they buy information they
can use to increase sales."
"HitBox® Benchmarker | HitBox Benchmarker offers a unique Web site
analytics service that allows you to compare your own site traffic —
including referral sources, use patterns, and trends against other
sites, including your industry peers."
Small/Mid-Sized Business Solutions:
"HitBox® Professional | With HitBox Professional, small and mid-sized
businesses can get sophisticated, real-time Web traffic analysis
without having to wade through Web server logs. There's no hardware or
software to buy, and no reliance on IT personnel to run reports."
Free Webmaster Solutions:
"HitBox® | The service that started it all. First launched in 1996,
HitBox is the most popular free Web traffic analysis service
available, with hundreds of thousands of subscriptions to date. The
Internet-based service is perfect for personal sites and independent
Webmasters."
- - -
WhiteCross Systems
"WhiteCross Systems is a leading provider of business and customer
intelligence solutions. WhiteCross provides critical infrastructure
services for companies interested in receiving timely and customized
data analysis in order to strengthen customer relationships, as well
as managing the health and outlook of their businesses. The outsourced
services include automated, tailored and supported data feeds for
line-of-business executives; and reporting and analytical CRM
applications that enable organizations to make more informed
decisions."
WhiteCross Systems
http://www.whitecross.com/
"Web Analytics
WX/WebAnalytics includes predefined reports which are delivered as the
final product of an end-to-end service hosted by WhiteCross that
extracts information held in a customer's web logs, processes it and
combines it with other customer data (demographics, registration data,
etc) into a customer-centric data ensemble on a WX/DES (Data
Exploration Server) for fast, scalable analysis. This ensemble is
available to the customer to analyze through a portfolio of reports
and templates or for direct ad-hoc analysis. The entire process is
automated and transparent to the customer. The end result is timely
and accurate reporting and analysis of web traffic and customer
behavior."
WhiteCross System
Web Analytics Serivces
http://www.whitecross.com/services/servicesWeba.htm
- - -
digiMine
digiMine brings the power of data mining directly to business users.
It allows decision-makers to transform company data into actionable
business intelligence. digiMine solutions help you realize specific
business goals, such as customer loyalty and retention, driving
marketing ROI, effectively managing content and increasing sales
conversion. digiMine helps some of the most successful companies in
the world leverage their data for better marketing, sales, and service
operations.
digiMine
http://www.digimine.com
digiMine products include:
Enterprise Analytics
Large, complex organizations easily interpret and act on high volumes
of online and offline data from across the enterprise or within
specific business units.
eBusiness Analytics
Gain comprehensive insight about your online customers, sales trends,
Web site usage and more using digiMine's intuitive Web-based solution.
digiMine
Solutions
http://www.digimine.com/solutions/default.asp
- - -
The most recent entrant into the Website Analytics market is
DoubleClick. "DoubleClick is looking to parlay its background in
ASP-based Web ad serving and management into an offering in the
competitive site analytics space, challenging established veterans
like NetIQ and WebSideStory.
Like its competitors, New York-based DoubleClick's new SiteAdvance
service is designed to track and analyze user activity on e-commerce
Web sites, for use in studying and improving on site navigation and
sale processes."
InternetNews.com
DoubleClick Enters Web Site Analytics, by Christopher Saunders, June
17, 2002
http://www.internetnews.com/asp-news/article.php/1366831
Site Advance
"SiteAdvance is a hosted, website measurement and analysis solution
that was designed specifically for online merchants. Unlike standard
site measurement tools that are built for technical departments,
SiteAdvance was created for business decision-makers. It provides you
with the information you need to answer the questions that are
critical to your business success.
With SiteAdvance, you'll be able to understand the interaction between
site traffic and transactions. You can combine multi-channel marketing
data with site behavior results to bring all the necessary information
together and produce the answers you need for:
Marketing
Merchandising
Site Usability
Customer Intelligence
E-commerce P&L Management"
The service is offered in modular format. Currently two modules are
available with two more planned by the Fall of 2002.
"Site Statistics:
Who's coming to your site?
Where are visitors coming from?
How are different types of visitors using the site (usage, navigation
and behavior patterns)?
Merchandising Effectiveness:
What products are selling best to which groups of visitors?
Which sections or departments of your store are generating the best
returns and why?
How is the shopping process and setup of your store working for
different visitor segments (why are they buying, and why not)?
When shoppers abandon carts, why?
What is the average order size or items per order by different groups
of visitors?"
http://www.doubleclick.com/us/advertisers/direct-marketing/siteadvance.asp
DoubleClick
Site Advance
http://www.doubleclick.com/us/advertisers/direct-marketing/siteadvance.asp
- - -
There are many additional website analytic services including
WebTrendsLive, and SuperStats. You'll find an extensive listing and
descriptions of outsourced web analytics sites in the Google
Directory:
Google Web Directory
http://directory.google.com/Top/Computers/Software/Internet/Site_Management/Log_Analysis/Commercial/Outsourced_Analysis/
And at Business 2.0:
Business2.0.com
Handpicked Directory of the best business links on the Web
Website Analysis Services
http://www.business2.com/webguide/0,1660,31721,00.html
- - -
Alternatives to outsourcing are available in the form of software
based analysis from your own server or computer system. The Google Web
Directory is a comprehensive guide to the many software offerings
available in this field.
Google Web Directory
http://directory.google.com/Top/Computers/Software/Internet/Site_Management/Log_Analysis/
I personally recommend the following articles for a beginning to
intermediate level introduction to the workings of statistical
analysis applications.
"When most people start building a Web site, they don't consider that
some day they might want to track how users come to the site and what
those users do once they get there. In this three-lesson tutorial,
Bill reveals how tracking your site visitors can show you things like
how many pageviews you're getting, the number of people that visit
your site, and what browsers people are using. Next, he shows you how
useful all that tracking data can be over the long term: Find out if
your site marketing is getting the job done, determine which areas of
your site are a success (and which areas aren't), watch how your
relative browser-share is changing over time, and more. Finally, Bill
discusses the limitations of user-tracking so you know just how many
grains of salt you should use as you study site traffic patterns."
Webmonkey
e-business: Tracking Tutorial, by Bill Winett
http://hotwired.lycos.com/webmonkey/e-business/tracking/tutorials/tutorial2.html
"... The Web's promise is also its burden. Because advertisers know
their online campaigns can be targeted, the smart ones want nothing
less than the attention of potential customers and a guaranteed return
on their investment. So they're turning to a new field called Web
analytics. Web analytics firms are engaged in the rather mundane
process of gathering and analyzing online data. What's remarkable is
the scope of their knowledge. They collect vast amounts of information
on individual Web users and use it to construct elaborate profiles.
With these, they promise, they can deliver to advertisers the people
most likely to buy their products. It's an attractive offer. In 2000,
the Web analytics market grew to $425 million, up from a 1999 base of
$141 million. The Aberdeen Group, a technology market consulting and
research firm, projects the market will reach $4 billion by 2004."
Red Herring
Customers in the crosshairs
http://www.redherring.com/mag/issue94/1040018304.html
And finally for a contrarian and historical view of webstats, I
recommend Jeffery Goldberg's article, regarding some of the
limitations in the interpretation of web statistics, as shown in this
excerpt:
"Can I infer from stats a minimum number of readers?
Yes and no. If by minimum you mean "at least one" then yes. If you
have 400 hits from Japan then you can conclude that during that period
you had at least one reader from Japan. You cannot infer that there
were at least 400 readers, because the same reader may hit a page many
times in a short period of time.
So, the only certain inference that can be made is that there was at
least one from a particular domain, or for a particular page. "
Goldmark.org
Why Web Usage Statistics are (worse than) Meaningless
http://www.goldmark.org/netrants/webstats/
- - -
Statistical gathering is only half the job. To see how these type of
statistics can be used to analyze internet site usage and
transactions, you might browse through the articles and statistics
offered by the following research concerns:
Nua Internet Surveys
IT/Computer Industry
http://www.nua.ie/surveys/index.cgi?f=FS&cat_id=12
StatMarket
http://www.statmarket.com/
Jupiter Media Metrix
Global Top 50 Web and Digital Media Products
http://www.jmm.com/xp/jmm/press/mediaMetrixTop50.xml
Industry Projections
http://www.jmm.com/xp/jmm/press/industryProjections.xml
Google Search Terms
website analytics
outsourced website statistics
I also used personal Bookmarks and subscription search services.
Should you have questions about the information provided, I'll be
happy to assist you further.
Best regards,
= larre = |
