Web Performance Matters

Most hosted Web Analytics vendors charge you according to page views -- not unreasonable since each view is a call to their server and a new record in their database. But what happens when Ajax and other rich applications eliminate the notion of a "page"?

That's from Web 2.0 Changes Web Analytics Pricing Models, a recent post by Phil Kemelor in CMP's Intelligent Enterprise Weblog (in case you had not noticed, the print edition ceased publication in January 2007).

Describing how he sees Web Analytics (WA) vendors adapting to Web 2.0, Phil continues ...

Well, vendors are now talking about pricing in terms of events or server calls, rather than page views ...

Expect to be asked about the number of Flash- and Ajax-based applications you're running. And if you add applications over the course of a SaaS contract, expect a scheduled audit to count these, assuming they have been tagged. ...

Look for vendor marketing literature and contracts to start replacing "page views" with "events." But then again, that's what you should be tracking, too.

--Phil Kemelor, in The Intelligent Enterprise Weblog, June 6, 2007

Of course, a big problem when discussing how to measure Web 2.0 is that we first need to agree about what Web 2.0 actually is. I believe one cannot really define Web 2.0, because, in the words of Joy Palmer, it is "a catchall phrase (like modernity), a net, to talk about all the nuances--social, cultural, technological, human--that seem to define our age, our technologies, and our relationships to them"**.

While Palmer's explanation sweeps away with one stroke the never-ending debates about Web 2.0 definitions, in a discussion about Web Analytics, adopting such an inclusive viewpoint leads us to evaluate all measurement solutions in the light of anything and everything we see happening on the Web today. And it so happens that Phil Kemelor has already been doing just that.

[** For more details, see my discussion forum post (Who said that?) of June 22, 2007.]

Web Analytics Report

Phil is the founder of PKWeb Communications, a Web strategy and measurement consultancy. He was the lead analyst and author of the Web Analytics Report, published by CMS Watch in May 2007. This 275-page report contains a comprehensive guide to the WA landscape, and comparative evaluations of 13 Web Analytics solutions:

SaaS-only vendors

• Coremetrics: Online Analytics
• Digital River: Fireclick Advanced Warehouse
• Google: Google Analytics
• Nedstat: Sitestat
• Omniture: SiteCatalyst
• WebSideStory: HBX Analytics

Hybrid: SaaS and Traditional Software

• 24/7: Open AdStream Analytics
• Auriq: RTmetrics
• Clicktracks: ClickTracks
• SageMetrics: SageAnalyst
• Unica: Affinium NetInsight 7.1
• WebSideStory: Visual Sciences
• WebTrends: Analytics 8

The report has received high praise from Eric T Peterson, himself an acknowledged expert in the field of Web Analytics, and author of two excellent books: Web Analytics Demystified and Web Site Measurement Hacks.

In a discussion thread about Web Analytics Tools Comparison: A Recommendation on the blog Occam's Razor, the post concludes that Picking the right tool for you is harder than finding a wife or husband!!. To which Eric responded:

... thanks to Phil Kemelor and ... CMSWatch we can all stop worrying about paying expensive and potentially biased consultants to help decide which analytics tool is most appropriate.

I’ve just finished browsing a 281 page review copy of Phil’s Web Analytics Report and I have to say he did an excellent job and has produced the most comprehensive and technically complete document covering specific web measurement technologies ever written.

--Eric T Peterson, in Web Analytics Tools Comparison: A Recommendation

Analytics wobble on Web 2.0

Phil spoke about the evolution towards Web 2.0 at a recent Gilbane conference for content management in Washington. Government Computer News [GCN] covered his talk, including:

Web analytics software measures traffic on large Web sites. It can show how many visitors a site gets, when most people visit, what terms they searched for, what pages they viewed and other data that could help Web managers better tailor their sites’ content.

Web 2.0 technologies could offer a whole new set of metrics, Kemelor said. How many people download podcasts on a regular basis? How many people watch a Flash presentation all the way to the end? How many people, after reading an organizational blog, jump to some other section of a Web site?

To address this new style of Web interaction, analytics companies such as Omniture, WebTrends, Unica and Coremetrics have started to add capabilities to measure Web 2.0 usage.

--Joab Jackson, Government Computer News, June 8, 2007

The bottom line ...

But despite some apparent progress, tracking Web 2.0 usage is still no simple matter, either technically and financially. Here's another extract from GCN's report:

Kemelor still advised the buyer to beware when considering Web analytics tools. While most companies claim to offer reporting capabilities for Web 2.0 technologies, in many cases the abilities must be developed through the use of custom reports. Because of this, potential customers should ask tough questions about how much work it takes to measure Web 2.0 usage ... An organization could chalk up expensive professional-services fees trying to tweak the software to measure Web usage.

--Joab Jackson, Government Computer News, June 8, 2007

The measurement complications introduced by Rich Internet Applications (RIA's), and the resulting reporting requirements, have been a particular focus of mine in previous posts. So I have more questions about these developments, which I'll be discussing in a follow-up post.

Tags: Phil Kemelor, Intelligent Enterprise, Web Analytics, Web Analytics Report, PKWeb, Eric T Peterson, Joy Palmer, Web 2.0, Rich Internet Application, RIA, AJAX, events, server calls, pricing, Performance Matters, Web performance, Web application, application performance