Coremetrics / IBM Digital Analytics (discontinued) vs. UserTesting

IBM analytics has continued to improve upon the days of being the original core metrics. After using the updated version for quite some time, it has been great at providing the needed analytics to measure ROI and goal performance for our quarterly KPI's. It has resulted in a great increase in web engagements although we are a midsize company, smaller outfits may not need such an expensive option.

Incentivized

It's the best for A/B tests or tests where you need a broad audience. If you don't need a real niche audience (that you should recruit then rather yourself), then you can rely on UserTesting. It's good because it's so quick, almost instant, it takes about 10 minutes on average before I can start reviewing and documenting sessions.

Incentivized

• IBM CXA comprises an acquisition called Tealeaf. This tool has deep heritage and this is evident in its present-day capabilities.
• The Universal Behaviour Exchange or UBX puts the concept of personalisation at the forefront. The ability to combine physical (analog) and digital transactions to create the complete picture of a customer journey, is a stand out benefit.
• The solution does not have to involve the purchase of software. IBM CXA can be sold as a service bundled with analytics as a service. This not only lowers the cost of ownership, it gets around one of the principal issues. Strong staff with design and analytical capability to drive the solution and deliver tangible benefits.
• The seamless integration of Watson AI services to help with the heavy lifiting. Watson reinforces the analytical focus this solution has and can learn to recognise situations specific to a company.

Incentivized

• Taking notes with video clips. I can take notes while I am watching a session and I can create clips of UX issues or bugs occurring. This really helps when I share them with other teams.
• Exporting all your notes. I analyze all usability tests by exporting my notes from UserTesting. I wish I could bulk export multiple tests though.
• Setting up demographics. This helps me reach out to users who are similar to our audience.
• Setting up screeners. Some studies require specific audiences (using a specific tool etc.), by setting screeners I can make sure I reached the correct audience.

Incentivized

• The user interface is in Flash, which can be very frustrating and slow at times. Apparently, this is to be transitioned in a future release.
• Can only segment the last 93 days of data. Any historical segmentation beyond the 93 days must be run in Explore (which is credit based, and has its own limitations with the number of credits per month, based on the initial contract with IBM).
• Reports can only display 93 days of data at a given time for custom date ranges. There are pre-programmed date ranges setup with IBM during implementation (last week, last month, last quarter etc.), but are not flexible enough to answer more specific questions.
• Certain reports cannot have segments applied, making answering some simple questions a bit more tricky. For example, I can create a segment around mobile devices and apply it to the marketing channels report, but I can't create a marketing channel segment and apply it to the mobile reports.
• Built in API calls allows for nice report design and automation.

• The organization of the work spaces/dashboards could use some work.
• I don't feel as supported as I used to from a customer success perspective. I used to have dedicated, go-to professionals to reach out to about my account who knew my project context, account history, etc. Recently we've been pushed into general support pools, and it doesn't feel like my account gets any personalized attention anymore.
• I would like to see a more refined experience for collaborators - the test plans I share with them are plain text/hard to read.
• Would be nice to be able to conduct focus groups using this tool.

Incentivized

IBM Digital Analytics is a great solution for our clients and I believe they offer the best solution for the retail space. We have access to IBM support via email or live chat and they can answer many of the reporting questions that come up. IBM is receptive to our feedback of the product so I am confident they will continue making improvements

I'm very happy with my experience of the product and the level of service and learning resources they provide. If the service becomes more expensive than it currently is then we might not be able to justify additional cost - but this is theoretical. I would recommend UserTesting and would ideally renew our contract.

Incentivized

Very easy to implement and use.

User Testing is very easy to use. You first select the profile of your participants. This is as simple as checking on checkboxes and creating some questions to target the right market and user. You may also just send the tests to your own customers with a simple link. After selecting your audience, you just need to drag and drop the tasks and set them up. You're always guided throughout the process and if you're missing something, the user testing platform will let you know. Really simple stuff.

Incentivized

Never had any issues

Never encountered any problems

Incentivized

As reports are templated, the system is pretty quick. Sometimes you have to wait a bit for a report to render. Or you might have to re-load the page. But there is no real issue here and the system is on par with other similar systems.

Perfectly fine. Never had any problems.

Incentivized

Overall, the level of support is very good and I would say it is a strong asset of the solution. However, you can sometimes feel that there is a difference of level among the support team.

Taking a long time

When we had issues or questions, it often took a long time to receive a response from the support team. This delayed our testing and caused frustration for our team.

Not helpful in our specific questions

When we did receive a response, it often did not fully address our specific questions or issues. This made it difficult to resolve problems or move forward with our testing.

Incentivized

Online training is really great. One of the best assets that they have. Lots of great videos, pop quizzes at the end of each module. Fantastic. Other tools have similar features, but not as good.

See previous comment: reading and understanding the encyclopedic implementation guide is a must.

From a technical perspective, the implementation was extremely smooth. Most of the change management / implementation hurdles were clearing use of the tool through our various security, legal, and information privacy teams. Once these concerns were addressed (UserTesting.com was very helpful in providing all the needed documentation), the implementation process was very simple and we were able to get going right away.

Incentivized

Much of the work we did in IBM Digital Analytics could have been answered through Google Analytics, a much simpler, agile and FREE solution set. Not mention, given the vast number of Google Analytics USERS, free and actionable support is simply a click away ... this compared to IBM Digital Analytics fractured and often absent support service.

UserTesting allows for a quicker recruiting process for our studies. Additionally, UserTesting has more unmoderated research features and capabilities. I think that their payment model is also easier than UserInterviews. We typically user UserTesting for reaching our hard to reach segments and recruiting prospective users not already within our product user population.

Incentivized

This solution can support large amount of data and transaction. The way that user management features are built, it shows it is meant for large organizations.

The package we have limits the number of people who can set up tests. This prevents us from scaling the use of the platform.

Incentivized

• We spend too much time trying to work around bugs on the new UI.
• We spend too much time trying to figure out how to make certain segments work because support and the knowledge center are lackluster.
• Our sales rep is very unresponsive and leaves us searching for a lot of answers on our own, including what other products we may benefit from that IBM offers.

Incentivized

• Cost savings of over $100K as we dont involve our research vendors as much as we used to do in the past
• Better tested experience get out in the market quickly even when we don't have enough time available with our researchers; our designers who are well-trained on usertesting.com can test out quickly

Incentivized