I think you both bring up great points: that the tool you choose has to be right for your needs. There are some F500s who could easily get more out of Google Analytics than Omniture, and others who absolutely have to have 60 eVars and 25 metrics to run against whatever dimensions they please. And of course, having a log-based solution gives you a lot of flexibility if you want to reprocess data to see things in a new light.

I think what it all boils down to is if you ask the right questions of your business, the tools will narrow themselves down. Most people tend to feature on the features of the tools first: does it report x? Does it correlate with y? Can I get z vs. a comparisons? Well, most of the tools will do all of these things without breaking a sweat, but features are seldom the answer to complex business questions about prioritizing media budgets, ordering IT tickets, developing new product and content sections, and where to find the next swell of audience. If you ask the vendors how they can help with these questions, the conversation gets much more interesting.

Thanks again for chiming in and please hit me up on twitter @evanlapointe.

Nick, you are right in saying in GA does what most simple websites want out of their stats, but I have always found that not actually ‘owning’ the data and not being able to update the stats as often as you like to be GA main issues. Whether you have a simple website or a more complex one, then doesn’t make much difference I believe. Logaholic Web Analytics offers some great features, but is not as expensive as Omniture and others.

I have found that for most simple websites Google Analytics does the track for more complex sites, reporting, etc, I normally recommend other tools such as Omniture…