Omniture SiteCatalyst vs. Google Analytics—Feature Comparison Matrix

To expand upon a previous blog post about the different benefits Omniture’s SiteCatalyst and Google Analytics offer, we have developed the below table that compares all of the important features in a matrix to make it easier for you to determine which is best for you.

Rise Interactive has years of experience implementing and with ongoing consultation for both Google Analytic and Omniture SiteCatalyst.

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Feature	Omniture SiteCatalyst	Google Analytics
Cost	Omniture’s robust application comes at a high price. Large corporations spend over $100K/yr for SiteCatalyst.	Google Analytics is free for sites with up to 5 million page views per month.
Ads / Conversions / Goal Tracking	Omniture uses the SearchCenter application to integrate PPC providers including Adwords for an additional cost. Conversion tracking can be tedious and confusing in Omniture.	Because Adwords and Analytics can be directly linked, the conversion tracking for PPC goals is free and simple to setup. Conversions tracking on Google can also group users that follow the same path on the site before a conversion.
Dashboard/Customized Reports	Can email hourly reports in Excel, PDF, HTML & Word. Larger reports can be slow during high traffic periods.	Can email daily reports in PDF, XML, CSV, and TSV. Limits each user to one default dashboard/report per site.
User & Access Management	Administrators can assign access at many different levels and organize people into groups. Their contact info is also retained in SiteCatalyst.	Google Analytics only allows two levels of access (read-only or admin) and users must have a Google account. No contact information is stored on Analytics.
Data Accuracy	The number of visits recorded may vary depending on how extensively the site owner configures SiteCatalyst. Cost vs.	Many people have found that Google Analytics under reports their page visits. This might be caused by slow loading pages and users leaving the page before the tracking code loads.
Site Overlay Tools	Omniture offers ClickMap which is installed and run from the users’ computer to view content popularity of the site elements within a page. There is a delay issue when accessing data for ranges larger than a day. Compatibility with new browsers can also be an issue.	Google’s site overlay feature (sometimes referred to as “heatmap”) runs through Google servers, so it doesn’t require the user to download and install anything. It allows the user to look at content popularity data from any given date range over a 2 year period without any time lag.
Importing Data	Data can be imported from various sources like video usage and mobile traffic.	Analytics does not allow any data importing
Exporting Data	ExcelClient plugin allows direct data export into Excel for analysis & custom-formatted reports.	Tatvic Excel Plugin uses the Analytics API to pull data directly into Excel for analysis.
Custom Variable / Event / Link Tracking	SiteCatalyst allows the user to track different types of variables to help organize the traffic metrics in multiple groups. Custom events, and links can also be tracked which are useful for tracking user actions that do not refresh the page or lead to pages without tracking code installed.	Google Analytics has the ability to track only 5 custom variables on any one page, which can be limiting. The Custom link and event tracking is comparable to Omniture.
Application Support	Omniture has a 24 hour support line and a complete online resource with common questions and information about its applications. They also use Twitter to answer support questions.	No guaranteed support from Google, but their forums are regularly monitored and updated with support information. There are also Google certified consulting companies that provide support.
Traffic Filtering	Not as many filtering options as Google, but traffic can be filtered by a IP address (or range).	Traffic can be filtered by domain, IP address (or range), site section, geography, referrer, client browser settings, and more.
Rollup/Multi-Suiting	For an additional cost, Omniture allows you to track overall page views, unique visitors, and to perform correlations for different traffic segments via multi-suiting for managing multiple Web sites. Another way to manage multiple sites in Omniture is by using Rollup accounts. This feature is limited because correlations cannot be setup for specific traffic segments, and data is delayed for about 2 days.	Analytics does not have the rollup capability, but its ability to display metrics for a specified group of sites together allows the user to do similar analysis. This data can be sorted by day, week, month and year and the user will also see the percentage change from the previous time period. Google also has a multi-tagging feature to gather traffic data for multiple sites. The key advantage for Google is that all of this is available for free.
Segmenting/Correlations	Each segment must be manually setup and all of the data is not retroactive unless setup using another Ominture product called DataWarehouse. This can take up to 72 hours to process new reports.	Very flexible – allows for custom segments and is already setup with many segments allowing for almost instantaneous analysis of correlated, retroactive data
System & Account Limitation	- The number of users is limited by contract . - Correlations are limited for each report suite, and rollup report suites cannot have any correlations. . - Variable limits exist for custom variables	- Page views are limited to 5 million per month unless the user has an active Adwords account (spending $1/day) . - Limited to 50 profiles per account, but you can have multiple accounts
Tracking Tag Performance	The response times varies slightly, but it doesn’t have a significant effect on page performance	Response time is very consistent ensuring good page performance.
Implementation / Configuration	Customizable tracking code is added to each page the user wants to track on the site. The configuration can be very advanced and could require additional training, but it gives the site owner more options.	The same tracking code is added to each page the user wants to track on the site. Google generates the code automatically, and setup is not very difficult to understand. That’s not to say that some skill isn’t required to configure conversion tracking.