Forrester Grades Analytics: Big Guys Still Lead, GA Now Strong Performer

On Thursday, Forrester Research released its Q3 2009 report on web analytics.

Leaders in the report were the usual suspects: Omniture, Coremetrics, Unica, Webtrends, as well as lesser-known Netherlands-based Nedstat. Since the last report, Google Analytics has risen to ‘Strong Performer’ status given its enhanced features for the enterprise market.

I’ve read the report and found it to be a well-considered summary report card of the industry. However, I would caution executives against flipping too quickly to the overall summary rankings data. Although the comparative costs of the various web analytics tools are ranked, cost is not a weighted factor in the overall ranking and does not influence the chart visualizations.

Cost, of course, is a very important factor to most businesses, the Fortune 1000 included, and so I would recommend using the report’s companion Excel-based vendor comparison tool to score vendors as best appropriate for your needs.

Another tip in selecting or switching to the right vendor for you: Web analytics tools are not mutually exclusive. You can install more than one. Given that GA has no licensing costs, you can’t hurt your budget by adding it to your mix of tools, regardless of the primary web analytics platform you select. I know it will add incremental insights, especially to your search marketing. And if you add Projected ROI and Comparative ROI columns to your Excel evaluation, I can even pre-calculate with confidence the result of the formula: “#/DIV0!”