As Avinash likes to say, the bounce rate by itself would already be worth it if web analytics didn’t provide anything else.
Akin

This might sound common sense to some folks, but you would be amazed at the instances when folks don’t plan ahead and so end up not having a common “key” between the various sources.

For example, you can have 3 different sources of data — web data, marketing contact data, and transaction data. Without a common key, one can still do analytics ‘in silo’ and leverage useful information that will benefit the company. However, if you are able to link the three sources using a key, the value from the analytics would increase exponentially with the added benefit of having a more complete view of your customer.

Does it require an extra data warehouse module? Is there a fee for a report level data feed vs. visitors level data feed? Is there a guaranteed time of night when you will receive the feed?

And biased to Unica’s web analytics solution I may add that of course buyers should also ask whether it is possible to host the web data mart on premises rather than having to deal with feeds alltogether.

Good points on filtering the data too.

Yeah, amazing isn’t it. One can have 1TB at home now for the videos etc.
Akin

On the web analytics data, one of the constraints I see that face many is the fact that many WA vendors store the data collected on their site (offsite for the client) and it becomes a tango for folks to get access to it and use it (sometimes you have pay extra to get access). It is good to have a ‘data plan’ at the time you sign your contract so that you know you can use the data when you need it.

And considering our space, it is very easy to get bogged down with sheer volumes of data. On this, I have two suggestions: (a) scope out what is really useful to you and try to do an extract of those elements before you hit it with analytics (no need to download every click and event that does not impact analytics), and (b) there are tools and technologies out there that has made storage cheap, try to leverage that (one example of this is the Teradata Extreme Data Appliance (EB 1550)that starts with a 50TB of storage and is relatively inexpensive). I am sure you can find cheap storage on most of the platforms.

Bottom line, I am in total agreement with you that one can compete on analytics at a whole different level if they can compete on the type and diversity of the data sources (the more you can bring in, the more visibility you have about your customers).