One of the many challenges for Internet marketing consultants and Web service providers is that when you assist an enterprise in developing a Web presence, they treat you as the expert, as they rightly should. But many consultants (whether designer, SEO, or SEM) give clients reason to doubt this expertise when default analytics accounts are provided by third parties. Furthermore, if you are a hosting company or a provide a content management solution you are expected to have some analytics solutions for your clients.
I've had a dialog with Daan van Rossum of
StatsPlugger recently and they are empowering independent marketing consultants and service providers to essentially be the source for their clients analytics and get around the problem of perception.
It's challenging to be an independent and provide clients with a complete marketing package. With StatsPlugger however, you have complete control over how you want the data presented. StatsPlugger provides an XML feed (similar to RSS) that provides information (for example the total amount of visitors to a page) which can be customized to fit within the look and feel of your own control panel. StatsPlugger partners will still need to install the tracking code on their clients sites, but when you're building a site from the virtual ground up it's easier to implement from the start as opposed to going back and doing it later.
Almost more appealing than the ability to white label analytics information is the pricing model of StatsPlugger. Partners are not charged licensing, setup or account fees, but rather a flat charge based on the aggregate amount of page views the company's clients generate within a month.
StatsPlugger is an especially good solution for hosting companies that are looking to replace the standard log file statistics. One of the many things that make the service appealing is that their costs will be greatly reduced as this is an ASP model. Savvy hosting companies will see the value in such a white label analytics service as they will be able to create different levels of analytics reporting and pricing.