In today’s world the Internet is playing an increasing role in day-to-day business. Even the most die-hard brick and mortar businesses realize the power of the web.
And for those businesses that truly lead the pack there is now an enterprise level analytics package to help them do business online.
Omniture’s latest release of Site Catalyst is just such an analytics package. Sure it gives you the usual statistics about your site, such as search engine referrals, page views, paid campaign management and so on. But it is one of the few analytics packages that also embraces Web 2.0.
Now, I’ve reviewed other 2.0 analytics packages such as 103 Bees but they are generally geared towards bloggers and other small sites. There isn’t really a higher level analytics package which could offer the flexibility of tracking not just PDF downloads, but also video views, interactive elements such as color pickers and other non-traditional website activities.
With the release of the latest version of Site Catalyst you now can. The latest version has 5 new features which Omniture has called “business optimizations” and they include:
Social networking, blog value, rich internet applications, dynamic site search, and visitor interaction profiling.
Social Networking
Site Catalyst can now correlate conversions and other useful data with user generated content, such as videos, reviews, ratings and forums. Further you can view which social sites provide the most traffic and/or the best conversions, as well as compare social sites.
Blog Value
With Site Catalyst you can now determine value of blog contribution to revenue, orders, repeat visitors and more. Further, it can help optimize blog article timing based on historical views. For example, based in historical data you may find people are most receptive to new content on Wednesday afternoons. Site Catalyst can help you determine this.
Rich Internet Applications
Better understanding of how people are using rich applications such as 360 degree views, color selectors, demo videos etc. and see how they are impacting your bottom line. Virtually any type of rich application can now be tracked to help determine how it is helping to achieve your online goals.
Dynamic Site Search
Site search is becoming more important these days. Too many customers are lost due to frustration with incomplete or inaccurate internal site search results. With Site Catalyst you can learn how to optimize your site search to improve conversions. Further, you can also prepare custom reports to see how site search is impacting your internal conversion goals.
Visitor Interaction Profiling
Probably one of the most important features of this new version of Site Catalyst is profiling. Using profiling you can determine which are your most important customer segments.
Profiling not only works to help track both online and offline conversion, but it also aids in delivering better targeted content, products and services based on a users profile. Site Catalyst even allows for A/B testing between customer profiles and segments.
But how do you manage all this information?
Well that’s where an improved dashboard comes into play.
The revamped admin console offers complete control over what reports are visible and used. Further, you can build custom reports from scratch or select from the many predefined templates organized by industry.
Site Catalyst also lets you manage access to reports by individuals, groups or functions keeping sensitive data confidential.
Last but not least, Site Catalyst offers a web services API which allows you to interface directly via a secure connection to Omniture Systems. This allows you complete access to your data so you can download directly to your desktop or other application.
What’s the drawback?
With all these great features you’d think there would be a catch. And perhaps there is.
Site Catalyst isn’t your average analytics package. Therefore it does come with a cost. And while it’s not one of the most expensive analytics package, it does stack up cost wise against the likes of Webtrends and others.
But given these new features, such a cost may be worthwhile considering other free applications like Google Analytics don’t offer rich media and other forms of tracking. Nor do they offer visitor segmentation and profiling.
But that may justify the cost.
