Web Analytics India Blog

Adding more options to analytics world, Google recently released Urchin software in beta! It’s however a hosted solution and available for download for a 90 day free trial period.

Urchin Software from Google is a web analytics product similar in scope to Google Analytics, except you install and manage the software on your own servers.

Why use Urchin Software?

Urchin is suitable for organizations that have content behind a security firewall or have other restrictions that prevent them from using the Google Analytics service. Urchin is also useful for those who want to perform ad-hoc historical log processing, who want to store their web analytics on local servers, and those requiring third-party data audits. Urchin Software from Google features the following upgrades from Urchin 5, among many others:

• More accurate geo-identification of visitors
• Cross-segmentation options similar to Google Analytics
• E-commerce and campaign tracking included (no longer requiring additional modules)
• Vastly improved embedded scheduler to more easily manage processing and re-processing jobs
• Improved user interface
• More robust log processing engine

Read more about Urchin Software

• Urchin Features
• Urchin Support
• Urchin Download

So if you have a website, it sure i worth installing and play around! and understand how it works.

In a strategic move Accenture added Maxamine and Memetrics to help expand its Digital Marketing Sciences services Capabilites.

Here’s a Overview of both the companies

Maxamine:

Maxamine, founded in 1997, scans websites to identify implementation problems which undermine online marketing performance. Its services provide guidance to help clients improve website optimization, enhance customer experience, and decrease privacy-related and other risks.

Memetrics

Memetrics, founded in 1999, helps companies improve the impact of their online marketing campaigns through dynamic optimization of content presented to customers. Memetrics’ proprietary testing technology analyzes thousands of variations of Web pages to determine what page format and context will deliver the best performance to each targeted customer set, allowing marketers to present more-targeted messaging to high-value customers on their websites.

Memetrics and Accenture share a vision to deliver more strategic marketing based on data-driven decision-making,” said Hikaru Phillips, Memetrics founder. “Working together, we will now have the scale, technology and people to truly transform the marketing function.

Stephen Kirkby, Ph.D., a founder of Maxamine, said, “The solutions that Maxamine developed will be advantageous to Accenture Marketing Sciences clients as they seek to strengthen their online marketing efforts. We look forward to seamlessly integrating our capabilities with Accenture.

Full Press Release

It was a while ago i wrote about Omniture Acquiring Visual Sciences, and here they are completing the Acquisition and coming up with a transition plan for the Visual Sciences Customers. This is indeed is going to be a big task but omniture has formed what it calls the Customer Integration program. We will have to wait and watch how Visual Sciences customers go thru the Transition phase.

From the Omniture Press Release here are the main points

Beginning on January 22, Omniture will roll out a Customer Welcome Program, which will include a series of customer meetings, informational webinars, training and local user groups designed exclusively for Visual Sciences customers

Employee Integration

Several Visual Sciences executives will assume senior management positions at Omniture. Aaron Bird will join Omniture as general manager of the Discover OnPremise product line, Ray Rauch will head up the HBX Migration Services team and Brian Sullivan will operate as general manager of Omniture Site Search & Publish. Visual Sciences’ chief executive officer Jim MacIntyre will continue to work with Omniture through a transition period assisting with integration and product roadmap and will then pursue other interests.

There are already talks on the transition and change in HBX on the Web Analytics Yahoo Forum. If your a HBX end user, something you should follow.

In an interesting article on CMS Watch, All the analyst come together to offers 12 predictions that they think will shape content technologies in 2008.

here’s an overview of the Predictions, and you can read the entire article at Twelve Predictions for 2008 . Most of the predictions applies globally however some are country specific. So here are my views (in quotes) on three important predictions with respect to India Internet market (Web 2.0 Exhaustion, Web Analytics and Search )

1.) Archiving becomes a prime focus for ECM vendors
Whether e-mails or regular documents, the need to shift large volumes of dated and dormant data to compliant archives is becoming an IT priority.

2.) Google will make a bid to become the World’s Content Repository
Seeing the enormous archiving opportunity, and leveraging their own unique computing capacities, Google will offer to store anyone’s data, of any kind (in any quantity), and make it queryable via SQL, XQuery, keyword search, and/or other options.

3.) MOSS enters the valley of disappointment
SharePoint will continue to grow at viral rates as a low cost, low touch, document collaboration system. But in 2008 we will see the start of a noticeable backlash, particularly among larger enterprises.

4.) Return of the buyers’ market
After years of ubiquitous scarcity among experienced consultants and product integrators, a slowing world economy could give buyers more options in the search for good services support

5.) Web 2.0 exhaustion
“Web 2.0″ will finally garner enough momentum to have everyone fall asleep at the slightest mention of the term. Already usage of the term seems to be subsiding, even as some of the underlying concepts (user-generated content, web-based social networking, AJAX interfaces, and so on…) become more ubiquitous.

Web 2.0 is new in India!, but IMHO most of the India internet population now would have not seen the Web 1.0 (now that term never existed, but whatever was before web 2.0) Web 2.0 Technologies like Ajax, flash, Ruby on Rails are picking up, the old html sites are changing and adapting these technologies, Social networking is growing!, targeting regional audience. So 2008 India Online market will see a increasing trend in adapting web 2.0 Technologies.

6.) Social Software vendor collision
So what is replacing Web 2.0? You got it: “Enterprise 2.0″ Like its predecessor, the term is vague, but the phenomenon is real. And there are vendor battles brewing.

7.) Facebook backlash in the enterprise
Facebook is growing at stratospheric rates, with substantial momentum among professionals in general and media and technology companies in particular, the latter in some cases looking to supplement or replace their Intranets with this exciting (and free) new collaboration and social networking platform. Other enterprises will experiment in their wake, and in many cases, will retreat in disappointment.

8.) Security and Identity Management trump functionality for buyers
Security and Information Rights Management will become areas of key focus for those managing large ECM implementations

9.)Finally bridging web analytics and online marketing
2007 was the year that web analytics vendors talked about tighter integration with online marketing vendors. 2008 will be the year that companies begin to buy into the promise of this integration.
Analytics vendors are continuing to productize their APIs after ironing out initial integration issues. Customers are starting to mature their analytics beyond basic reporting — to guide targeted e-mails, personalized offers, and focused segmentation.

In 2008, Web Analytics is India will start forming an integeral part of Online marketing, Internet based companies will start reviewing various paid web analytics options available in the market and implement them. Although it will still take time realize the Power of Web Analytics, Companies will use Web Analytics to understand traffic and initial assessment of their website performance.

This inturn will churn many Web Analytics startups consulting firm offering Analytics Implementation, Support and Analysis support. 2008 will also see many web analytics vendor entering India, to add to the current web analytics vendor.

10.) Search is dead….Not!
In 2008 you’ll hear vast pronouncements that “search is dead,” particularly as enterprise search vendors’ marketing continues to shift en masse towards the concept of “information access platforms.” This is a chimera.

Search is going to be big in India, specifically local search. There are many startups in India (Guruji.com, OnYoMo.com, JustDial.com, AskLaila.com), with Internet population growing at tremendous rate local search will grow reaching local audience. Search Marketing and SEO has always existed in India, but year 2008 will see a increase in consulting firms providing SEM and SEO solutions. Indeed a great year for the Online Market in India.

11.) Productization of Search Platforms
Though there’s a clear sense of a return to search basics, at the same time the Google Appliance — whatever its limitations — still has other vendors in a fit. Google can deliver a turn-key solution that will start indexing within the hour of receiving the shiny box.

What do you think of these predictions? what’s your take on Web Analytics, search market in India? Pen down via comments.

Well no iam not writing any predictions yet , but here’s what the Web Analytics industry experts had to say about how web analytics is going to shape up in the coming year!. Some great thoughts, expectations and suprises in the pipeline for the coming Year.

Check out the posts below, it’s worth a read!

Web Analytics Prediction posts

Marshall Sponder the author of the famous blog WebmetricsGuru writes about his web analytics predictions for 2008 and how he faired in his 2007 predictions. Marshal writes about the world economy, Presidental elections and Web Analytics 2.0/3.0
Marshall Sponders predictions for 2008

Rich Page made some interesting predictions for the 2008 year ahead in web analytics, A must read, he speaks about Coremetrics buying WebTrends, Omniture coming out with free version, Amazon getting into webanalytics, and some shocking acquisitions which might happen!
2008 Web Analytics predictions by Rich Page

Stéphane Hamel wrote about Guy Kawasaki’s predictions for Web Analytics, this was from a interview done with Jeremiah Owyang .

Guy Kawasaki’s Predictions for Web Analytics