Qantas can also identify visitor segments according to trends in behavior and market itself accordingly, SiteCatalyst also reveals whether or not visitors are penetrating the Web site effectively, and can report on offer and product performance.

"Because Qantas is the largest airline in Australia, it's critical for [it] to have easier ways to crunch and analyze huge amounts of data in real time to quickly create compelling offers and services to customers," Gail Ennis, senior vice president of marketing at Omniture, said. "Because Omniture manages more than three billion transactions each day, Qantas can rely on us to deliver the scalability and ease of use [required]."

Omniture is also helping Qantas with its search marketing initiatives, including referring domains, search engine optimization, and e-mail campaigns.

Director of Melbourne-based Web analytics software vendor Aimstats, Andrew Bartley, said it would have been nice to be approached by Qantas as its application "is more than capable" of handling such volumes.

"Qantas is a public company and they want to do it at the cheapest price [so] they're not obliged to go down that track at all," Bartley said. "A local company has to do it cheaper and better to try and generate revenue. It's also a bit of a reputation thing as well [so] it's difficult for a small local start-up."