It is a pity that many big enterprise businesses spend more than half-a-million dollars a year on expensive Web Analytics solutions instead of spending even half of that money on qualified web analysts.
Just because you are big and have access to enormous funds, does not mean that you must go for expensive solutions when there are barely any qualified heads to handle web analytics in the organization.
In order to differentiate themselves from free web analytics tools like Google Analytics, the big paid vendors are providing a slew of advanced features and technologies. This is making their tools more complex and harder to learn and manage. The amount of time and energy required to learn these tools may far outweigh the benefits their advanced features would bring to your organizations. Are the think tanks in these Enterprises aware of this difference? Probably Yahoo Analytics and Google Analytics could provide more value as they are far easier to manage internally.
Go for Qualified Web Analysts Not Expensive Tools (Avinash Kaushik’s 10/90 Rule)
To me, it makes more sense to get 10 web analytics guys like me for $500,000 per year and get most out of them, instead of paying that amount for the tool you could not use fully. I love Avinash when he suggest 10/90 rule when it comes to the right kind of investment on web analytics. It is not because it puts me in the job, but because it makes pure sense to me. Instead of spending 90% on an expensive web analytics solution and the balance 10% on qualified brain/s, it would provide far more returns if you are spending 90% on qualified and fresh brains, and the rest on the tools. Don’t buy something (in the name of features) that you can not or are not going to use – this is a plain simple wisdom most can follow.
I am not against the paid vendors of web analytics solutions because I do not have the luxury to personally use their tools. But if people out there complain that it is really hard to learn, configure and implement these tools for their analytics needs, it is a sad story that defeats the very purpose. It would be really great if they can make their tools simple and easy to use. Are these big vendors not doing any kind of usability testing before releasing their tools for sale? Why are they not listening to their users? Web analytics, after all, is all about testing, measurement and improvement.
My second preference in favour of Avinash’s 10/90 rule is that, web analytics tools throw immense data at you in the form of various reports, data elements, different directions, charts and overlays. It is the job of an analyst to interpret this data and provide insights to the organization for improvements. This is not easy. If you do not have enough web analysts or qualified brains for this job, no tool, how expensive that might be, can improve your online business. In order to get the right insights, it is important that the people you choose are well grounded not only in web analytics, but also know inside out of online marketing, how sites are designed and work, how search engines work, some knowledge on search engine optimization, customer behaviour, etc.
Web Analytics is Not IT, But a Marketing Function. Period.
Web analytics is basically a marketing function. It should not be delegated to your IT department. To really understand what the data is trying to tell you, it is important that you know your business, your customers, their behaviour, actions and aspirations associated with your website, or any marketing media you use for your business. You must understand how to solve people’s problems and get more returns and value for your organization. While it might be good to have IT skills in PHP, JavaScript, SQL, etc., web analytics is still a marketing function, and it is important to have business skills in SEO, online marketing, PPC advertising, Email Marketing, web design, and so on. I fail to understand why companies still prefer to have IT skills in candidates they are seeking out for their web analytics roles. They are not the right kind of talent to solve your marketing problems!
Can You Make Your Tools Easy? Please!
A recent article by Web Analytics Demystified shows an increasing trend by the Enterprise businesses to move to simple web analytics solution providers like Google Analytics. Even though Google Analytics could not solve your advanced web analytics needs, its simple interface makes it easy to manage in-house and solve your most important problems. If Omniture, Coremetrics, WebTrends, and similar paid vendors could provide their high-end analytics features as ad-hoc solutions to Google Analytics, that would make web analytics so much more powerful and the job of analysts much easier. And above all, if all these free and paid vendors could make their tools easier with simple point-and-click features, that will take analytics role out of your IT preview forever if you still belong to that old school and are having any doubts about where web analytics should go.
And yes, if your organization is really big, needs elaborative web analytics data, has the necessary talent and know-how, and can get value out of your investment, than you must go in and have highly sophisticated web analytics tools and solutions for your organization. No doubt about that.
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Hi, I am Ashish Kothari. I have helped several small and medium businesses make money from the web over last 12 years. If you have a project and need help in online marketing, improving SEO - website rankings, traffic, usability or conversions 
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