comScore's Digital Analytix Enterprise (DAX) product was acquired by Adobe in 2015 largely for its European customer base, with the goal of migrating former DAX customers to the Adobe Analytics cloud. Thus, DAX is no longer available.
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HitsLink
Score 9.0 out of 10
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HitLinks is an inexpensive web analytics tools providing page view and unique visitor data to smaller site. Customers tend to be media sites with fairly simple analytics needs. The tools requires that some code be appended to all pages to be tracked, and does not offer any social media tracking.
DAx has the features, very advanced features (mentioned later) that a power user needs, and is highly customizable, but doesn't require software or hardware ownership. For those capabilities that are not currently there, the customer reporting team often finds a workable solution that we can present to our client. For the more basic users and executives, the dashboard often meets their needs; else the report tab can help with quick access to metrics that have already been built by analysts. Lastly, the level of complex analysis in the tool still impresses. You can analyze web events at the event level, visit level and visitor level. You can apply filters at the report level (for all three - event, visit and visitor) or metric level (again for all three levels). On top of that, they have a concept of scope and rules which, combined with the 3 levels, can really allow a power analyst to ask just about any question and get an answer.
If you're looking for a comprehensive, user-friendly web analytics tool, you should definitely consider Hitslink. Before you subscribe to the software, take a test run on their Demo version of the site, as it behaves exactly like the full professional version. The biggest disadvantage is that Google+ registered users' search engine traffic data will be mostly (if not completely) blocked. However, this drawback is rarely a significant hindrance to analyzing your website's traffic, but it is something to be aware of.
While I know they are making strides in this area, Digital Analytix is definitely built with power users in mind. The learning curve can be steep.
Because the platform is non-restrictive in terms of label/variable naming, power users need to have intimate knowledge of their schema in order to build reports on their custom variables.
Specific information such as search term and geographic location is blocked for users coming into your site through Google who are also signed into a Google+ account, making it increasingly more difficult to analyze trends as more and more people acquire Google+ accounts. This is part of Google's strategy to make companies pay them directly through their Google Analytics software, and it is working against services like Hitslink.
My company does not utilize Digital Analytix for our own service, we simply provide professional services for it. As such, I can't really answer this question in a meaningful way.
Hitslink is as useful as it is user-friendly. I haven't seen another website analytics tool as comprehensive and at the same time straightforward as this service. The only downside of Hitslink is Google's blocking of information from its registered Google+ users to the software. As Google+ continues to reign in more of the population, I can see this being a significant problem for Hitslink to overcome. However, there is still a vast majority of search engine users whose actions are visible through Hitslink, and as long as this stays the case, the service will be an invaluable tool for website administrators.
The service is incredibly intuitive and very easy to learn. The only drawback is not having a mobile-optimized website to easily view website reports on the go. But on a PC or Mac, Hitslink is as user friendly as it gets. I have yet to see a navigation system on any SaaS website that makes a service that is this comprehensive seem so straight-forward.
I have proficiency with Google, Adobe and IBM (formerly Unica's) enterprise offerings. For companies primarily interested in basic reporting, managing a lot of users with very similar needs, and who don't necessarily have the in-house manpower or expertise to build a lot of reporting from scratch Google and Adobe's offerings can typically be safer choices. comScore and Unica offer a more advanced, analyst friendly tool that can be essential for targeted marketing and for a more flexible implementation and can still do all the things that their competitors can do - if you're satisfied with the learning curve for basic users, the advanced capabilities of comScore make this a very worthwhile tool for a digital business.
