Comments on: Why You Should Be Using Omniture Discover

By: Tom

Tom — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 03:36:30 +0000

Jason,
Would I be upload offline data that is not connected to SiteCatalyst? For example, I have gift card transactions from our POS, so I have a variety of data points (frequency, avg ticket, location/DMA, recency, etc) that I would like to use Discover to perform some analysis on. I know it appears to be geared more toward web data, but it seems like a great tool to be able to also use to process some of our offline data as well.

By: Claudia

Claudia — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 19:51:33 +0000

Hi Jason,

I found your blog during my search for Omniture Discover guides. It’s definitely a powerful tool, but I feel that to really get the most out of it I could use some more guides on advanced segmentation. Trial and error doesn’t seem to be a good method for learning in this case, unfortunately :p

If you know of any good advanced segmentation guides, I’d appreciate it!

Thanks!

By: Jason Egan

Jason Egan — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 20:38:40 +0000

Thanks for the comment, Craig! Anything you push into Omniture is indeed available in Discover. In fact, the recent update that they’ve made to their processing platform ensures that the data in Discover is no more latent (daily at this time) than it has always been. So, any of the offline data that we push in at the transactional level can be seen in Discover.

By: Craig

Craig — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 20:24:34 +0000

I’ve held off on biting the Discover carrot my Account Manager and others keep dangling primarily because of the disconnect between online and offline data. Jason, I know that you’ve used Transaction ID’s in Omniture to upload offline data into SiteCatalyst. Does that information transfer and work seamlessly into Discover? If so, I’ll take a new look.

By: Jason Egan

Jason Egan — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 13:41:18 +0000

It is true that the data can be sampled based on the amount of data that you’re sending to Omniture, Aman. I would be willing to bet that most of the sampling will hopefully be gone in the future though. I know that this is an issue for some people.

By: Aman

Aman — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 08:12:29 +0000

Hi Jason,

I’ve seen sample rates across the board in report suites, from 1:50 on large portals to 1:2 on a automobile site. We’ve been told to use the data as directional, you might want to add that because I have seen a lot of confusion lack of awareness around sampling and how it impacts the numbers.

Cheers
Aman

By: Jacques Warren

Jacques Warren — Sat, 11 Oct 2008 19:05:20 +0000

Wow! That makes it way easier to implement than WebTrends Visitor Intelligence, which requires some special implementation. WebTrends however has said that VI runs on a true relational database, which Discover is not according to them. Any comment?

Also, the low rate of adoption could probably be due to lack of human power. Those slice’n dice products need to be attended by people who are able to find valuable insights within all the possible combinations of variables.

By: Jason Egan

Jason Egan — Sat, 11 Oct 2008 18:30:37 +0000

That’s right, Jacques. There are no eVars required to implement Discover. Discover is more like a new GUI that is dropped on your existing data.

As for why not every Omniture customer is using Discover, I’d say it’s most likely a combination of cost as well as Omniture not pushing too hard on the sale. Most people seem to be unaware of exactly what you can do with Discover. I’m not really sure of the exact cost of the tool off the top of my head. The cost is probably tied somewhat to the volume of server calls that your site is creating.

By: Jacques Warren

Jacques Warren — Sat, 11 Oct 2008 16:11:56 +0000

Hi Jason,

You’re saying that Discover doesn’t require any particular implementation? Not even a little evar of its own? Well, I guess the reason why everybody is not on it yet is pricing. Does it add a lot?

Thanks