Q&A with Phil Kemelor

Have you noticed any differences in how North American and European web analytics vendors do business?

I think European vendors stress their local presence and support capability in stronger terms than North American firms. North American firms focus a great deal on functionality, features and scalability. I don’t think North American firms see support as a potential selling point, and I think European vendors do. I spoke to customers of European firms who indicated that the vendor being from their country really mattered. It sounded to me like it was similar to the comfort of shopping at a family owned business rather than the WalMart. You don’t hear this from the customers of US firms. True, the larger US firms have European presence, but this isn’t perceived in quite the same way as a firm having local roots.

Have you noticed any significant differences in the tools offered by North American and European web analytics vendors?

The leading North American web analytic firms are evolving into internet marketing and business intelligence firms at a faster pace than European firms. In the CMS Watch Web Analytic Report that I just completed, just about every US vendor I researched is aggressively building out their own capabilities in these areas, either through in-house R&D, acquisitions, and tightening integrations with partners, sister companies or pre-existing applications. Coremetrics, Fireclick, Omniture, Unica and WebTrends are examples of this trend. While the US vendors have talked about integration with Internet Marketing for some time, I think that we’ll see this coming together over the next year.

This isn’t to say that European firms aren’t pursuing the integration of analytics and marketing, but my impression is that this approach is more important to US firms as part of their product development strategy. Most European vendor tools appear to be primarily focused on straight-ahead web analytics. Generally speaking, I don’t believe European firms have had the demand from their customer base to move quite as quickly into the area of marketing integration as their US counterparts.

In my opinion, European firms are innovative in different ways than US firms, perhaps with a focus on the “human” side of analytics. I’d cite Nedstat’s Ajax-based UI, as well as graphical UI from ClickTracks as examples in usability. True, ClickTracks may be based in the US, but their founders are from the UK and they do have a significant European presence. I’d also include Instadia’s incorporation of a survey component into their solution. This functionality was one of the reasons Instadia was an attractive acquisition for Omniture.

How do you think the markets differ?

European analytic companies are, for the most part, smaller than their US counterparts. The US market is evolving over the last few years and has seen acquisitions and companies going public. By contrast, the European market appears to be more stable. While US companies focus on the global market, European companies tend to focus on Europe or specific countries.

Small and medium sized customers in Europe will likely purchase a European solution. However, European enterprise customers will look at US solutions and perhaps one other European vendor. It is rare to find a US customer that would consider a European analytics solution.

European customers can select a local solution, thereby ensuring language and time zone support for their tools. US vendors and customers aren’t oriented the same way. In the US, the corporate office is generally in one location and most support is handled from there.

Phil is the principal analyst for the CMS Watch Web Analytics Report and the founder of PKWeb Communications, a vendor-neutral web analytics and strategy consultancy.

A former journalist, marketing exec and 14 year Internet veteran, Phil has 10 years of experience in Web Analytics and previously headed the Web Analytic program at Bell Atlantic. He founded and served as Principal Consultant for the Web Analytics consultancy at NetGenesis, one of the first web analytic software firms, and led engagements with a number of Fortune 500. He has also headed Web development and operations for Verizon, SAIC and the US Postal Service.

Phil is a member of the Web Analytics Association, and the chair of the Ecommerce and Metrics program for the Web Managers Roundtable of Washington, DC.

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