What’s Next for Web Analytics?

With the availability of a free web analytics package from Google Analytics, interest in web analytics is exploding from all types of smaller businesses who might not be able to afford a sophisticated analytics package from the likes of Omniture, Coremetrics or WebSideStory. Does this mean the end of the high-end, premium web analytics solution?

I don’t think so. Instead I think this will raise the sophistication level of new web analytics users beyond what Google Analytics can currently address. Either Google Analytics will continue to evolve along with the need for ever more robust solutions, or its current user base will migrate to the high-end solutions. It will be interesting to watch how the high-end solutions will seek to differentiate themselves not only from each other but from the Google threat.