Foundational to any successful web analytics deployment is the strategic planning and creation of a business strategy that can drive repeatable success. Technology Leaders provides the web analytics, marketing consulting and technical expertise that unites a customer's marketing and business goals with web traffic, mobile and social media reporting.

This is achieved by identification of web analytics stakeholders and their business goals; translation of those needs into conversion optimization indicators that provide insight into the success of online marketing goals; and the specific web analytics expertise needed to discriminate between rich marketing analysis and over-saturation of data.

Often the strategic planning phase--what type of reporting, how much and for whom--will play large in the ultimate success of the web analytics effort.

In addition, many customers face the particular challenge of managing a complex, even worldwide web analytics roll-out--with multiple agencies, reporting constituencies, architecture teams and marketers all involved at once. Technology Leaders' web analytics expertise helps customers plan and implement global governance and standards strategies for web analytics, including the measurement of mobile platforms and social media.

By working closely with Technology Leaders to establish enterprise-wide guidelines for report structure, nomenclature, taxonomy, tagging integrity, definitions and implementation guidelines, customers can save wasted effort and concentrate on answering business questions worldwide in a way that is meaningful to marketing and business decision makers.

Technology Leaders is completely vendor agnostic, and provides the industry insight and vendor familiarity to help guide any tool selection effort. Partnerships with several key vendors like Google Analytics, Adobe Omniture, Webtrends and Yahoo! Analytics add insight into important measurement technology platforms. The firm can arrange for measurement technology presentations as needed, or can provide detailed analysis of a range of tools in a manner geared to picking the vendor(s) that best suit the customer's budget and reporting requirements.

While hardly exhaustive, the thumbnail evaluations of selected web analytics platforms below may help start the conversation. It is important to note that in most cases, the difference between unhelpful analytics and success is in the strategic deployment and implementation details, rather than between one tool and the next.

Selected Web Analytics Tools (Alphabetical Order)

Adobe Omniture
Long a favorite of digital agencies for its relative ease of use and implementation, Omniture is known for its slick interface and modular structure. Many questioned its relevance post-acquisition by Adobe, and wondered whether the excitement generated by its former management team could be sustained inside a larger organization. As of this writing, Omniture has retained its footing in the agency space but, like other offerings, has lost some ground as Google Analytics places a free product directly into its market. With a wealth of API interfaces and plug-ins, Omniture SiteCatalyst also offers NAME HERE, a web analytics "warehouse" offering. However, the data warehouse offering, like those bundled with some other web analytics products, may suffer in comparison with best-in-class warehouse solutions by specialty providers.

Google Analytics
Thank Google for making web analytics as close to a household word as it may ever get. Even those who believe it skews to the simplistic compared with more robust tools, will likely admit that Google's free web analytics offering has remade the industry mostly in a positive way. Google is found in organizations of every size and type these days and for those customers with large Google Adword accounts, a more robust, paid version of GA is available. For smaller companies, GA has enabled quick, basic reporting that obviates the need for an investment in licensing. Instead, it has opened up the possibility to enhanced implementation by allowing companies to focus their dollar on expertise rather than tools. That said, GA is in most cases not scalable enough for larger enterprises; but can be used therein as a control or sandbox.

Webtrends
Veteran in the space, Webtrends remains the only major vendor with both a cloud-based solution as well as on-premise software of equal power. Some say Webtrends suffers from being around for so long, that people associate it with a profile that is no longer appropriate--that of a "log analyzer" tool. Fact is, Webtrends delivers what may be the most powerful and most configurable tool in the market. While its latest offerings enable better and easier ways to measure mobile technologies and social media, these continue to take a back seat to its core extensibility. Perhaps alone among the major offerings, Webtrends offers more flexibility and customization (due to its internal architecture and software DNA) than other tools in the market. And with both a software offering and an on-demand solution, customers can choose which way they would like to get their analytics: in-house or outsourced. For the enterprise, this choice can be a revelation; especially when privacy concerns or regulations require extra care in data security. In fact, this may be what draws some of the biggest companies to choose Webtrends software--it is eminently scalable, lives inside the firewall, and can be used flexibly in ways that some other tools cannot (for instance, running older data sets in a "forensic" manner--a luxury not available in most other offerings). If there is a downside to WebTrends, it is really two-fold: some say it is less intuitive for the user than, say, Omniture; and, like Omniture, it can be quite a costly license especially when page-view volume is high.

Yahoo! Web Analytics
Relatively new in the space, Yahoo! Web Analytics has put together a robust and attractive free on-demand product that some will say outstrips Google Analytics in capability and scalability. Not available to all, YWA is offered through its consultant network and through its advertising network. But for those who can gain access to it, the rewards may be tempting. With powerful drilldown capability, rapid data delivery and long data-retention policy, it rivals what some of the paid solutions offer. And, as with the free GA offering, it allows subscribers to concentrate their resources not on a license fee, but on a customized, careful implementation that drives web analytics intelligence rather than a set of less-than-relevant reports that few put to use in their daily decision-making process. It will be fascinating to see where YWA goes in the next couple of years.

At the heart of any successful web analytics effort is a robust and flexible tagging strategy. Based on a customer's marketing analysis and business goals, Technology Leaders' expert team of web analytics consultants will develop a complete tagging strategy for all online marketing assets that need to be measured, including web, web 2.0, video, interactive modules, mobile marketing and social media platforms. Once the strategy is put into deployment, Technology Leaders will create all tags and deliver complete, customized documentation for proper tag placement and optimization; further, Technology Leaders provides real-time support for developers throughout the tag deployment process.

Technology Leaders' support for developers is an important key to web analytics success. Perhaps the most frequent roadblock to best-practice web analytics is an improperly tagged, or even an un-tagged site. Today's web analytics offerings depend on page tagging to collect data from user interactions with the customer's web site(s). These tags take the form of javascripts that are activated when the page loads into a user's browser, and the data they collect is considered to be much more accurate and granular than any data collected from web server log files.

That said, often developers lack the time and resources to get tagging done in an expert manner. The developer's role in tagging is not to write the tags nor determine their function, but to put them into the designated spot on the page or within the dynamic content management system as the case may be. To bridge the gap in resources and expertise, Technology Leaders provides full support for developers throughout the process of tag placement. This includes phone support, real-time interaction, robust documentation, Quality Assurance testing, and iterative placement of tags until they are properly placed and collecting data as needed.

Once the tags are properly placed, they can collect the kind of targeted, accurate data needed to fuel meaningful reports and insights for decisionmakers.

Technology Leaders provides robust documentation and support, and often this is sufficient for the organization. However, where specific training and/or knowledge transfer is required, the firm offers flexible plans for individual and group web analytics training sessions for the customer's key personnel. Both marketing-focused and IT-specific training is offered where the customer wants to expand training in best practices or technology disciplines that will help staff to address critical online marketing analytics challenges; training may include industry best-practices that have proven effective in multiple customer engagements; tool-specific report configuration, tagging and overall digital analytics skills from an intermediate to a high level of expertise.