Over the past 2 months, my current employer has allowed me the opportunity to work with both Google Analytics and Omniture extensively. One of the tasks they (my employer) have entrusted me with is Site Conversion and Optimization. Having had experience with this before on much smaller sites, this is my first experience involving a major high-end content site with over 1 million indexed content pages and hundreds of thousands of unique visitors per month.
As you can imagine the task ahead of me is huge to say the least. I’m dealing with huge numbers across the board, where one minor change can be the difference of tens of thousands of dollars. Thankfully, I work with an IT and Marketing staff that are second to none that were smart enough to involve Google Analytics in their analytics strategies along with their Omniture platform. Over the past month I have been building and creating our Site Conversion process. It’s been fun and challenging at the same time. Along the way I have extensively used both Omniture and Google Analytics and have some things to say!
Let me explain to you the 6 big reasons I prefer Google Analytics over Omniture.
1. Simple & Clean UI
The user interface is incredible with Google Analytics. Whoever created it is a flat out user interface (UI) genius. When you get involved in Web Analytics you will quickly learn that you need fast access to the most vital information so you can make quick solid decisions. Omniture suffers in this category, and Google Analytics dominates. Your analytics initial page will quickly show you the vitals. Visits, Page views, Pages/Visits, Bounce Rate etc. Perfect for those us who don’t have time to stare and sift through data all day long.
2. The Absolute Unique Visits Metric
I love this metric. Avinash in his book Web Analytics 2.0 explains in better detail the technical importance of this metric and how Google actually generates it. But this metric from Google Analytics gives you the best true idea of how many people actually visited your site this week, or this month. In most conversion rates that I track, I want to know data based off each unique visitor, not each time a visitor visits the site. Google Analytics provides the best metrics for this.
3. Custom Reports Feature
Nearly every major web analytics application allows you to create your own custom reports. But I just have not found any Custom Report Wizards to be as easy and intuitive as Google’s. From the custom reports page, I can create and save out my own custom reports and group these reports by tabs which in and of itself could have many purposes. I was amazed at how complicated it was to build custom reports with the metrics I needed inside Omniture. I found Google Analytics way easier.
4. The Site Overlay Tool
Omniture has what they call their ClickMap tool, but to get it going you have to install a Firefox Add-on into your browser which then displays a sidebar in your browser that communicates data as you are viewing your homepage. It works just fine, but going with Google Analytics is much more simple. The Site Overlay tool inside Google Analytics simply opens up your desired page in a new browser window inside a type of iFrame, and displays the click mapping to you. No need for installing a Firefox add-on.
5. Synchronized with Google Adwords
Everything works so well within the boundaries of the Google family. By simply having my accounts all under the same profile, all of my data from Google Adwords syncs with my Google Analytics data. What this allows me to do is now see completely accurate data from SEM type metrics involving Google. Because the company I am with are so heavily involved in Paid Search, this allows me to have clean organized data that I can compare against all types of scenarios.
6. Quick Exporting of Data
You are probably just like me! Every second you lose during a work day on the web is like hours wasted in productivity. With my super fast Internet connection at my office, it takes me 10-15 seconds on average to export a CSV file of data from Omniture. And that’s for smaller files. The bigger ones take minutes, and sometimes are too big to be exported at all. With that same amount of data being exported from Google Analytics, my CSV exporting is instantaneous thus giving me better streamlined access to all of my analytics data.
I love Google Analytics! I have a greater appreciation for it now then I did before. It’s so flexible! It’s so robust! In my situation, I am using both Omniture and Google Analytics because of some of the complexities behind what we do on the Marketing side of things. But I find myself relying more and more on Google Analytics the farther along I get in the process of optimization.
Can Omniture provide you with more types of data and metrics for web analytics? Sure! But it’s the simplicity of the metrics and the data that Google Analytics provides that makes it so special. In Site Optimization, you can get over cluttered with web analytics data to the point of “analysis paralysis.” You can tell that whoever worked on developing Google Analytics, spent some serious time understanding what Data is actually important and what is not! Thanks Google!
Guillaume
January 21, 2010
Gosh!
Do you realize you’re comparing a free product and a product worth something like $100,000?
No way!
Jason
January 21, 2010
You do make some good points but at the end of the day, a great analyst makes use of many tools, the argument isn’t nearly as simple as you make it.
Let me reply to a couple of your points (and it should be made clear that I am harder on Omniture than probably anyone else you will find):
1. You are comparing Google Analytics to Omniture. If that is the comparison, then there really is no comparison as Omniture is (SiteCatalyst, Discover, SearchCenter, Test & Target, and more). What you are comparing is Google Analytics to SiteCatalyst, which I agree with you, Google Analytics wins this fight.
2. As a company matures in their analytics practice, they begin to discover, no pun intended, the power of personas and segmentation, which you can do to some degree in Google Analtyics but doesn’t come anywhere close to the power of Omniture Discover. Google Analytics vs. Omntiture Discover. Omniture wins.
3. The “Absolute Unique Visitor” metric is easily available in Omniture Discover but I would argue that most practitioners don’t utilize the visitor metric and have adopted the “visit” metric as an industry standard.
In the end, an analyst must pick the tools that will be best utilized to provide value through a deep understanding of onsite behavior which leads to optimization based on targeted content.
Jason
January 21, 2010
I should point out one other thing. You seem to be so concerned with speed. And how waiting for a minute to get a download is such a waste of your day.
It’s clear that you aren’t an experienced analyst when you say “Perfect for those us who don’t have time to stare and sift through data all day long.” You run reports, you aren’t an analyst.
An analyst knows its a long haul process, it’s not about one tool here or one report there, it’s a process of gathering data, staring at reports, sifting, slicing, reslicing, measuring statistical significance. These things can’t be rush.
I suggest you take a step back and reevaluate things and maybe retitle your post “6 Reasons I prefer Google Analytics over Omniture for Running Reports”.
Jorge
January 21, 2010
I totally agree. Google Analytics blows Omniture out of the water. Fantastic post.
Claudiu
January 22, 2010
I am also a user of both and have to say that I feel much better in the Google Analytics platform… maybe because I have used it for a very long time.
2 more reasons I would add:
Google Analytics Advanced Segments – way way better than the ones provided by SiteCatalyst (I didn’t have a chance to test Discover yet)
Intelligence – I like it so much that I consider that my dashboard now.
Pivoting – with it in GA I get insights really fast while in Site Catalyst I just get frustration.
As for the Site Overlay I have to disagree with you… the Omniture tool, even if it is buggy and much slower, it is way more relevant than what Google provides.
Rob
January 29, 2010
Jason,
I might suggest you take a step back and reevaluate things and maybe rename yourself “Omniture Corporate Goon.” Launching a personal attack on another analyst because his approach is different from yours is immature and shows that you don’t have enough to do in your day. Your egotistical lecture reveals your hypocrisy- “An analyst knows its a long haul process, it’s not about one tool here or one report there, it’s a process of gathering data, staring at reports, sifting, slicing, reslicing, measuring statistical significance. These things can’t be rush.” Spelling can’t be either. It should be “rushed”, and “re-slicing”. Maybe if you had gathered your thoughts, stared at the screen, sifted, sliced, re-sliced, and measured the significance, instead of being so concerned with belittling someone just posting some personal opinions, you could have gotten it right.
Chase
January 29, 2010
Rob..thanks for backing me up bro! I’m not sure why some people enjoy personal attacks. I was just giving my opinions based on how I look at things. I understand everyone is different. The funny thing is about him being critical, is that he is probably half the analyst you are!
Alex B
January 29, 2010
While I agree that Omniture is way more complex, that complexity offers far more flexibility than Google Analytics can currently offer.
I’ve yet to find something that Omniture wasn’t really capable of doing provided you have a good understanding of Javascript. In addition, some of its tools are invaluable for a large analytics implementation.
You mentioned campaigns so I’ll reference that. While the integration with Google is indeed nice, Omniture’s SAINT makes multi-channel campaigns trivial to tag and then analyze, allowing you to retroactively slice and dice said trivial tags by meta-data that you apply. I find this feature huge for analyzing large campaigns and their efficacy.
Omniture has all sorts of issues, but for managing a large amount of sites/domains, it’s really second to none. From what I’ve seen/heard, Index Tools (YWA) comes close, but Google is still pretty far away. That is not to say that excellent analysis cannot be gleaned with GA– it can and there is a lot to be said for the product but I can rattle off a whole lot of features (at the administration level alone), that make Omniture the more suitable corporate WA tool at present.
Having said all that, GA has improved dramatically in a short period of time. One has to wonder how long that gap will remain.
Ben Gaines
January 29, 2010
Okay, okay, everyone. Let’s settle down
I think we can all agree that there are aspects of both tools that are advantageous to the skilled analyst. I firmly believe that there are features of SiteCatalyst that are unique and powerful, just as Google Analytics offers a number of things that can lead to tremendous insights.
I think your intent was to say, essentially, that “at present, Google Analytics seems to be meeting my current needs more effectively.” That’s great! Good web analysis is always a win. In other circumstances, a user’s needs may be different, and the SiteCatalyst feature set may better address them. We’ve certainly seen that to be true for many, many users.
Jason (who, incidentally, is not an Omniture employee) does make a good point that Discover is worth checking out, if you haven’t seen it before. The segmentation is robust and fast, and the ability to correlate any reports across the board makes it a really flexible tool for advanced analysis and optimization.
In any case, Chase, we sincerely appreciate the feedback you’ve provided here. Both myself (@OmnitureCare) and my colleague, Jessica Petersen (@OmnitureUXD) have taken note of this information and are sharing it here to ensure that we continue to improve our offerings and expand our feature set to meet the growing needs of analysts such as yourself.
Take care,
Ben Gaines
Community Manager
Omniture, an Adobe company
Craig
February 18, 2010
For the price you can’t beat Google. Love ‘em or hate ‘em they got some cool apps.. for free!
Raj
April 21, 2010
Hey guys,
This is a wonderful post!!! But lets keep in mind that this is just an discussion and not a war.
First of all i would like to say both GA and Omniture are good in their own ways however Analyst has to decide which tool best suits the the clients need(like how deep we want to track their business to meet their expectation).
I would stick with GA if we are not into deep data analysis but would prefer Omniture (especially Discover) for deep analysis like segregating the data.
Best,
Prithvi
Rachael
December 1, 2010
Thanks for the great post! I’m a little late to the game on this one, but have to agree with you on some of the advantages of GA over Omniture. And yes, you’re comparing a free tool with an expensive tool, but that should be another metric for comparison!
Brian Thopsey
December 6, 2010
great article! Can you share more detail as to why you stated “Google Analytics gives you the best true idea of how many people actually visited your site” Thanks ahead of time.