Without claiming this is an exhaustive or even a well ranked list, here’s what I like best so far about Omniture D2 (Discover 2.0): (note see earlier post for a broader overview of Omniture D2)

• The ability to mix traffic, path, and commerce data freely. The distinction between these in SiteCatalyst is arbitrary and based on the legacy code base. It’s great to have that constraint lifted.

• Instant segment filtering. On the site analysis screen, the funnels, and other screens that don’t work like the report panels, you can instantly limit the data to any definable segment by just dragging a segment tag up the segment bar near the top of the page.

• Page groups. For funnels (and probably some other pages) you get to define named groups of pages and then apply the group where before you had to use an individual page.

• Unlimited nested metrics. This is the core of what the Report Panels allow, and while it can be easily over-used, it’s really powerful and makes it possible to find the answer a lot of otherwise unanswerable questions.

• The ability to customize segments. If you only want ‘purchasers’ to be people who bought more than 5 times, or to create a segment based just on people who purchase one particular category, you can.

• Dynamic and informative graphics. This capability could be blown-out tremendously, but the interactive pie-charts do a good job of making the information inside the data clear.

The interesting thing about this list is that it isn’t too different from my top 5 wish list for SiteCatalyst. That sounds like great news – my wishes have been granted. Except they haven’t. SiteCatalyst still has none of these capabilities, and I have a feeling it’s going to be even more frustrating to live without them there from here on out.

This gets to the core of some of what I haven’t quite come to grips with yet - the relationship between SiteCatalyst and Discover 2. Omniture positions it as ‘the next level of analysis’ and therefore a premium product and a targeted solution for ‘more complex problems’. There is certainly a lot of truth in that, but it also seems like quite a bit of spin or wishful thinking.

The truth is that D2 just solves certain web analytics problems better than SiteCatalyst, and does so because it was built later on a different platform and using newer technology. Certain core features are clearly advanced, but ironically when you look at D2 vs Discover 1 there are just as many features that are simply enhancements of existing stuff (such as new funnels and new page flow) as there are radically new ones (like Site Analysis). Omniture is walking a fine line in calling this a different product and charging for it incrementally – and substantially.

In some ways this is a great way to solve an age-old software development problem. Switching core code and underlying platform is nearly impossible to do in ‘mid-air’. Having Discover evolve from V1 to V2 and hopefully V3 as a stand-alone product from a development point of view provides us with the latest technology and makes the migration gradual and rather easy.

This is not to say that the two products substantially overlap today. SiteCatalyst is still full of features and reporting capabilities that Discover 2 doesn’t provide. Having SiteCatalyst exist enables the D2 guys to not have to spend time re-inventing everything so they can do all this cool new stuff – I get it. But a version or two down the road it’s hard to imagine that they don’t come back together.

Or perhaps the products just get rationalized better, one as a reporting plus a little analysis and the other as a hard-core analysis tool – but both delivered in a common interface and on a common platform. It’s easy to see how a very nice two-tier solution could be coming another version or two down the road.

These issues aside, I can’t imagine a serious SiteCatalyst user not wanting/needing Discover 2. It completely changes your relationship to the data, because the powerful interface lets you move through the data in so many directions at once – changing the reports, metrics, segments, time frames and visualizations all within a single interface. I was able to use this to discover and clearly document some very significant marketing issues for a client last week that I would have never been able to really know or certainly prove without D2.

I give Omniture a lot of credit for breaking off the team and resources to built D2. While it causes some temporary issues, I’m really glad to see the next generation of website analytics coming from inside Omniture rather than outside. We’ve made a substantial commitment internally and on behalf of our clients D2 gives me confidence that over the next 5+ years we’ve bet on the right team.

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PS: If you’ve got questions about D2 please feel free to leave them in the comments and I’ll answer them as best I can.