Blackbeaks Blog….All things Analytics

The comments below were recently written in a post on Eric Petersons blog, but I wanted to share this and perhaps see if Omniture are paying attention.

Instadia had a very useful system, one I considered a real contender to be the No.1 web analytics system in Europe because of the system structure and data collection method it had.

You could use it in a very similar way to Visual Sciences. Practically all the work with Instadia was done on the vendor side backend (filtering, report set-up, segmentation etc). Once your (very simple) tags were implemented on the site, you pretty much had it all. All you needed to do was then use the Instadia ASP system to find and get what you wanted, you didn¢‚¬„¢t need to go back and add tags to pages if you wanted to do something new. It is/was a web analytics system designed as web analytics systems should all have been designed from the first time someone thought of using Javascript and an ASP server.

Now when Omniture bought Instadia I was immediately worried because my first reaction was that they will absorb the system so that everyone moves to Site Catalyst. While Instadia is still available to existing clients for the next year the idea is that everyone will move over to SC eventually.

When I questioned Omniture directly the answer was that the technology is to be discontinued. This is a real shame. Omniture¢‚¬„¢s technology is simply not as good as Instadia¢‚¬„¢s was from the respect that much of the data collection relies on the Omniture tags. It means that tagging for specialised and custom reporting becomes an issue. While this is not that important for smaller companies, often, when you¢‚¬„¢re talking about large enterprises this is a huge issue and a big cost.

In my opinion, if Omniture had any sense they would develop their next release based on Instadia¢‚¬„¢s data collection method and backend, not discontinue the system. They could then use Site Catalyst as a superior front end for Instadia but still allow people like us to develop very powerful filtering and segmentation into the SC suite. You¢‚¬„¢re very welcome to pass this onto anyone you know at Omniture to get their comments as I¢‚¬„¢m sure they will defend their stance, however they will probably take the view that the SC system is currently far more advanced than Instadia.

It is much stronger from the eye candy point of view and the integration with other systems SC has is impressive, BUT, this integration would be even more useful with Instadia¢‚¬„¢s backend and data collection method.

I think they have invested too much into SC to change it and their policy therefore is to continue with what is not an ideal way to collect data.

I won¢‚¬„¢t mention names but when I raised this with an ex-Instadia guy now working for Omniture, he was equally as frustrated as I was.

Omniture purely and simply have bought Instadia for the market share and the very good people they have gotten as a result of the acquisition in Europe.

I am not criticising Omniture for the acquisition, i think it was the smartest move they could¢‚¬„¢ve made. I do however feel they are wasting the potential of the Instadia tool.