Big business starting to believe in Google Analytics

My colleagues and I have observed an interesting trend over the past few months; more and more Fortune 1000 prospects and clients are buying into Google Analytics.

A year ago, virtually none of the companies that we worked with used Google Analytics as a primary analytics platform. In fact, few even considered GA as a viable alternative. Instead, most companies stuck with well-known analytics brands like Omniture and CoreMetrics or approached new-fangled outfits like UNICA, which fancy themselves as comprehensive marketing management solution, capable of delivering intelligence across all online and offline marketing channels.

Interestingly enough, though, a lot of the companies that we worked with started to recognize some fundamental flaws with these “enterprise” level analytics providers. First and foremost, the price tag associated with these platforms was painfully high. Often surging into the six-figure range, cash-strapped marketing departments started feeling the pinch. Secondly, most of these platforms required extremely tedious and time-consuming implementations for both new installs and upgrades. That’s bad news for organizations in desperate need of solid and refined success metrics.

Lastly and perhaps most importantly, these platforms were often likened to high-performance jet fighters or formula one roadsters. In other words, while the performance levels were extremely high, very few expert-level administrators were capable of actually operating the controls.

Here’s where Google Analytics stepped in.

Slowly but surely, Google began adding enterprise-level features to their analytics suite. Couple that with an inherently user-friendly interface, a headache-free implementation, and an incredibly attractive price tag ($0) and it became clear that GA could take the place of those pricey and cumbersome heavyweights.

This year alone, we helped several high-profile clients steer away from pricier options and towards company-wide implementations of Google Analytics, and the beauty was that in each case, the client was able to take GA for a free test drive before making the executive decision.

In 2009, Zeta is hard at work transitioning a new batch of clients and prospects to this platform. Google Analytics isn’t a perfect platform, but with enterprise-level features and the ability to track everything from search to affiliates to email, it’s getting better and better all the time.

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