When I was first announced the participation in the MSN Gatineau Beta Testing, I was expecting wonders. Especially considering several things that had happened:
1. It took them months to come up with it.
2. You needed to sign up for the invitation a long time ago.
Now that I have had the chance to test it and use it, I am a little disappointed. Bottom line is that the functionality is limited. It is not very clear where to find your referrals, your keywords and your pages. The graphics are ok, but not top notch. I didn’t find a way of clearly cross-segmenting and therefore limits my ability to interpret data. I didn’t find anything that would make me feel like I was in front of something completely new.
In their defense I have to say that this is only the Beta version and therefore a lot more of functionality and documentation is to come. Also I think that the pressure was up for them to provide a package as complete as Google Analytics and that is very hard to accomplish.
Now, I want to make sure that my complaint is heard properly. I am not complaining about the work and effort of the programmers. Which in my opinion have done a great job. I am complaining at the management. It seems like this project could’ve been an amazing opportunity for MSN to win over some Analytics users and also perhaps increment their paid search base.
I think they could’ve come up with something so much better. Specially knowing the kind of quality they have in Microsoft. I mean, Microsoft is full of top notch minds. Why not represent your company with a consistent best effort?
I was asked what features I would like to see in the Gatineau project with a survey; perhaps they didn’t really pay attention to my answers. But I believe there is a lot of space to improve the Google’s proposal.
The only reason why I am disappointed is because I know the potential of Microsoft. Of the people behind it.
Alex Centeno MBA.
All the views expressed here are only my personal opinion.
