I work as part of a web team within a medium sized company, and one aspect of my role is to provide decent website analysis and statistics so that my department can continually shape and mould what direction we move our website on. We were currently (and still are) using Google Analytics which is a nice simple free tool, doesn’t have much in the way of bells and whistles but it got the job done, however as my role expanded and as the company I work for acquired new companies our web stats requirements became more advanced and a decision was made to search for something that could offer us more advanced reporting, such as cross domain tracking, so we could see where people came in, where they ended up and where they left.
In March of last year I began the search, I had presentations and calls from the market leaders but we eventually settled on Omniture’s SiteCatalyst. A tool which their sales representative assured us could deliver cross domain tracking, email tracking, a “predator” style heat map of where people were clicking on site, easy reporting, automation and all sorts of other things which would enable me to add value to the company.
We finally signed on the line in late Q4 2009 and were assigned an account manager and an implementation consultant. And that was pretty much it. We were given some code to copy and paste, we were charged in the region of £1000 I believe, to send a web developer to their offices in London for implementation training and left to it.
After 4/5 months of toil and despair, dealing with an implementation consultant, who if I were to describe as being relaxed would be like saying Hitler was a bit of a cad; we had enough. We scheduled a call with our account manager and said after 4/5 months of implementation we still didn’t have any of the things we had asked for. Not one. The heat map overview didn’t work because we had JavaScript drop downs on our home page. The cross domain tracking still doesn’t work, the reporting is cumbersome, clunky and time consuming and we have no idea who comes to the site from our emails! So we addressed our concerns that we felt like Omniture had taken the money and done a runner, and we were given a new consultant to help implement.
Whilst an improvement, we still find ourselves in a similar situation. Now 6 months + on there is not one valuable report I have been able to run. We are no closer to getting a decent report that tells me how many leads our emails in Exact Target are bringing in or any other report of value.
Any report that looks like it might turns out to be wrong! For instance, I ran a report on some marketing collateral to see what had a low conversion rate, presented it to some people in marketing and found out the numbers the report had spat out were totally and completely wrong. We have records of all the downloads done across our sites and these numbers didn’t match even a little bit.
A big gripe I have with Omniture is that they speak to you in technical mumbo jumbo, when it isn’t my job to understand this. My job is to report, make recommendations and guide. I was in not so many words told to go on a course (£1000) so I could learn about all the technical garbage. My thought is that if you are the technical expert, shouldn’t you make recommendations based on our requirements and then do them?
I honestly regret making the decision to move to Omniture as I have not seen one accurate redeeming feature in their product, their customer service or their implementation process.
This whole process has been like passing a cactus.
If anyone has had a similar experience please let me know, or if you have successfully managed to link Exact Target & Omniture and are able to do some valuable reporting please get in touch! Tweet
5 comments:
Joey,
I'm sorry to hear that your experience with Omniture has been so poor. You have given us some painful but valuable feedback that I will certainly be sharing with the appropriate people here. The implementation and analysis process is not supposed to be painful, let alone comparable to passing a cactus, and I'm sorry that this process seems to have broken down so poorly in this case.
I'd be happy to sit down with you some time and talk about your requirements and how to meet them. I can certainly appreciate the frustration of feeling lost with all of the technical stuff, and I promise I won't do that to you. (Also, I have done quite a bit of work with Genesis and have been part of a number of ExactTarget integrations.)
You, and anyone who may share your frustrations described here, is welcome to e-mail me directly at ben at adobe dot com, and we can set up some time to talk.
Thanks,
Ben Gaines
Product Manager
Omniture, an Adobe company
Hi Benjamin,
Thanks for commenting, as I mentioned on twitter if the implementation were as efficient as the people monitoring social media channels then I'd probably be writing a very different blog about how amazing Omniture is and how great it makes my job etc etc.
Alas it hasn't been. We've not got the expertise in house, which is partly why we took on Site Catalyst, so that we can get some complex reporting done. I'm sure Google Analytics can do it but by all accounts requires a much greater knowledge of technical wizardy then I profess.
I was under the assumption our implementation consultant would spend time in house, gain a knowledge of our requirements and implement. Something that was done expertly by the company who implemented our customer support system. So we have had a taster of how it can be done.
With Omniture its been a case of, here is the code, off you go, bye.
A very different feel.
Today was not a good day as I have been an inhouse evangelist for Omniture but when I send out a report which shows which of our PDF's have a low lead generation rate and a marketer comes back to me with concrete proof my numbers are wrong, I look the fool.
I have monetary objectives on full 360 degree views on our marketing campaigns, which I can't acheive this quarter because between Omniture and Exact Target no one has been able to give definitive answers to me OR show me a working example of how another customer is doing it.
My manager is not impressed with this at all as it has been a waste of our web development teams time, my time and his time. This wouldn't be a problem if we had some valuable information we could make educated, informed business decision on. But we don't even have one. I have literally not a single piece of good evidence to say "We need this tool".
That, and we're down some £16,000. AND getting bills for going over our server calls!
We have a call scheduled with our account manager on Monday at 12 to discuss this but unless we are going to be credited back some money or have our annual subscription date reset to a date when this is implemented perfectly I don't think it will be a tool that we will continue to use.
Which is unfortunate as sales did a really good, convincing demo.
Thanks
J
That clarifies things significantly; thank you for expanding on your experience (and for complimenting our social media efforts!).
The implementation process is not intended to consist of a simple code hand-off. The normal process—the one I've seen hundreds and hundreds of times—involves a lot of discovery and learning about customers' business needs, and then delivering or helping to create customized implementations that meet those needs directly. That is what creates valuable, powerful reporting and analysis! It sounds to me like that did not happen, for one reason or another. And even worse, you end up feeling personally let down as the "Omniture evangelist" in the office. I'm very sorry to hear that.
Of course, I don't know all of the details, but I certainly hope that your call on Monday will clear things up. I would invite you to shoot me an e-mail afterward to let me know how it went, and if there is any follow-up that you need from me.
Regardless, best of luck, and please let me know if/when I can help.
Thanks,
Ben
How's it going now? My experience is that Omniture requires significant customization to make it work effectively from one unique site to the next. However, email tracking, downloads, and unique visitors should work pretty easily. Omniture has lots of docs.
I really like the Site Catalyst tool but I have usually been blessed with lots of internal tech support. I've also entered each new install with the knowledge that ongoing development would be needed.
Recently I got a large quote for implementation services from Omniture for a new install at a new company.
Let me know if I can lend a hand or advice.
Thanks Adami! I do need to spend some time properly looking at making our email reporting in Site Catalyst a little smarter. At the moment it involves manual importing of spreadsheets.
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