Monday
night was our Web Analytics Wednesday on a Monday. What a great evening we had! We were guests of
AT Internet whom most of you know as XiTi, the leading France-based web analytics provider who is now venturing in the North-American territory. In terms of location, I think I can safely say the 30 guests were all pleasantly surprised by our new spot:
Le Local, a trendy Old-Montreal building conveniently located in the Cité du Multimedia. You know I can't resist good food, and the "
hors d'oeuvres" were simply amazing!
Back to our sponsor: AT Internet
I talked about their product, Analyzer II,
couple of weeks ago, but you have to see it in action to appreciate its power and some of its pretty unique features. Of course, it has what you would expect from any web analytics tool, but there are a few features I found particularly interesting:
- Groups, Sites and Sub-Sites: Particularly well suited for multi-sites and very strong in the media vertical. The Sites and Sub-sites feature are exactly what you would expect: a hierarchical sub-categorization of your sites, so you can view reports and grant permissions on specific areas of larger sites. But the Grouping feature offer a very interesting possiblity: horizontal grouping of sites and sub-sites. For example, if a company has several sites with ecommerce enabled areas, they could all be grouped into an eCommerce vertical.
- Time selection: who decided we only wanted to view days, weeks and months? The calendar feature allows you to pick only Mondays, or maybe you prefer weekends, or consecutive weeks excluding weekends and an holiday, etc. Neat and efficient.
- Segmentation: The segmentation module is also very powerful. As you drill down into reports, it automatically creates new segments, so from that point on, all the reports are based on it. You can also pick and chose dynamically from 300 metrics to create new segments on the fly (although the limit is on 3 months of data).
- Did you say "engagement"? Analyzer II picks some relevant metrics to create a Behavioural Quotient scoring indicator, or what some would refer to as "an engagement metric". The next release will allow you to select the metrics and give them some weight to create your own aggregated metric.
- Near Real-time, rich-media, heat maps, monitoring... check out my previous article: XiTi: robust mid-range alternative for more details.
AT Internet in Montréal
AT Internet is joining other analytics related companies in Montréal:
Neuralitic,
iPerceptions and
Coradiant. Their strong Professional Services approach has contributed to their success in France and their mission to deliver ‘On Line Intelligence’ to their clients. Head-quartered in Bordeaux, France, they also have offices in the UK, Germany, Spain, and partners in Asia. Local specialists will help with implementation, support, coaching and even conduct analysis for you if you need to. In the coming months, AT Internet will be moving to larger offices and grow a team of 10 people to help them out in Montréal.
My take
Most of the time, conversations revolve around the differences between Google Analytics and Omniture SiteCatalyst and we forget about other alternatives that are really worth looking into. It's not a matter of tools; it's much more about the needs and the persons using the tools. With a robust web analytics platform and a clear focus on client relationship, I think AT Internet’s solution is more powerful than Google and certainly less expensive than Omniture.