Adobe's Customer Journey Analytics is a service built on Adobe Experience Platform that lets the user join all data from every channel into a single interface for real-time, omnichannel analysis and visualization, allowing users to make better decisions with a holistic view of the business and the context behind every customer action.
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Webtrends Analytics
Score 4.4 out of 10
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WebTrends provides an enterprise web analytics platform and, according to Forrester, has a strong focus on support for mobile and social channels and a very open platform. Webtrends competes directly with Adobe Site Catalyst, IBM Coremetrics. and comScore DigitalAnalytix.
Adobe Customer Journey Analytics is really well suited for large organizations with scale and a huge amount of offline/online data from various sources. However, for smaller/mid size businesses it may not be very efficient given the cost implications and dependencies around having AEP as well. There is an opportunity for Adobe to make this scaleable product more widely available but looking at options around how to make this product more mass-market.
Scenarios 1. If you want to use web server log files as input to your web analytics, then Webtrends will provides a good product, with great ease of implementation. Don't even think about being cheap on hardware, and make sure Webtrends runs on real servers, not in a VM environment. 2. If you want to use Data Tagging, similar to Google Analytics or Site Catalyst, Webtrends has a powerful product, just be prepared to pay. 3. If you are new to Web Analytics, but it is the strategic direction, start with Webtrends on Premises. Questions to Ask 1. What are you trying to accomplish? 2. Can you place a dollar value on the benefit that you expect/need from Webtrends? 3.Can you live with Webtrends running SaaS?
Customer journey analytics can be used to analyse data from a range of data sources and the data can be visualised, filtered etc. by users.
It also allows users to handle custom data to handle their specific needs and the data can be catered as per users need its like your own customised platform.
The best part is the integration users can connect this to various other platforms with one ID. This helps the user with easier usage and less hassle as everything is kind off a click away.
Control privacy, data sharing and competitive industrial knowledge using Webtrends on premises
Great control over custom reports, custom dimensions and metrics
Flexible tool which allows multiple methods of data capture. To my knowledge it was the first tool with a Tag Builder / Tag Management function built in via a supporting website.
Journey Canvas UI, when using a mouse with scroll wheel, it defaults to zooming in or out of the map, and not up and down if the map is very extensive.
When trying to break down a dimension by a second dimension and third dimension. If you are replacing the 2nd dimension breakdown, it would be beneficial to keep the 3rd breakdown instead of wiping it out.
The big downside, the elephant in the room, is that it does not (as of right now) have on-demand segmenting, drilldowns, etc. You have to think of what you want in advance and create those reports then analyze some data. This is huge. You can, of course, re-analyze old data after creating new reports but you still have to wait. (This deficiency may become obsolete with the release of Webtrends Explore later this month (May 2014).)
It has fewer mature integrations with other products and databases than competitors do, although I'm told it works with SharePoint better than anything else does.
Its attribution modeling capability is behind Google Analytics'. In my humble opinion, this could be changed quickly if Webtrends would make some tweaks to its standard visitor history files (i.e. preserve the order in which past visits were sourced beyond the single most recent one, rather than storing all those past sources as a randomized list).
It doesn't incorporate statistical tests, confidence intervals, or statistical associations. However, this same criticism can be applied to its competitors (other than A/B Testing products). It's a tabulation program, as they all are. In this respect, web analytics tools as a group are relatively primitive. Sorry to bring this up as a criticism of Webtrends but it's my pet peeve about the whole industry and I just have to say it. (p.s. take advantage of the heavy-duty Webtrends Scheduled Export functionality to get really granular data that you can feed to a stats program to get significances.)
Although the documentation, help screens, phone support and the knowledge base have improved tremendously in recent years, there is still a pretty steep learning curve because it is different from the tools that entry-level users may have already been exposed to. This can be a shock and many users are alienated at first because they just don't get some of the fundamentals at first. I'd like to see much better help screens that are thoroughly interlinked with the KB and documentation. Having superb online support would make a world of difference with the adoption of this basically powerful tool.
It's the most customizable and flexible analytics tool I've used. While the tool can be slow and clunky at times, the value it provides far outweighs those issues. Being able to bring offline data and merge with web data to combine in one place is where clients need to be get the most success out of their data
I would be willing to try Webtrends again AFTER some research from other users. I would need to see that users mention better and faster customer support on questions and issues that arise while using the software. The software is capable of vast and incredible things, but if it isnt properly set up and supported during use, it is just a big hassel and waste of everyones time and money.
The software is pretty easy to use, but if someone hasn’t really worked with similar software before, it can take a little time. We use simple searches to find help for specific tasks, and just make sure that when we have a newer person using the software, we spend sometime to help them understand it
If I could give it a 0, I would. Not having an intuitive user interface made it impossible to convince non-analytic business users to use the tool on their own. Even as a seasoned analyst, frequent calls were needed to get what should be simple tasks done. Account managers don't understand the tool either, and have to refer you to technical support
For the most part, CJA is available. There are instances where the product is experiencing an outage but I haven't found this to be super frequent to the point where it really impedes my work
Adobe Customer Journey Analytics is only as fast as the data that enters into it. If a business has Edge capabilities based on their use of Adobe's WebSDK, then all insights from the web data are in realtime. The moment this is stitched with batch data, such as the case in CRM data, then performance is slowed to the most latent performer. New methods of streaming in data from S3 or from more advaned data warehouses, such as Snowflake, are required in order to reduce latency.
The v9 admin interface and v10 reporting interface work as well as expected, but have a tendency to be pokey, especially for bulky reports and whenever you're connected to wifi. I much prefer using the REST API for all reporting for this reason, which simply dumps out the data and doesn't bother with the user interface.
Good enough tools and offline support. We had a model of "hypercare" that was mostly good, sometimes not good. But that was more personality/people based, rather than established processes. Overall the support was timely and effective
I once went on to Twitter to ask for help from my network of analytics people, and Webtrends themselves responded. They have been an excellent partner in making sure that their product is being used to the best of it's ability and I greatly appreciate that. Both Omniture and Google Analytics, do not have that level of support over social media
Should be staged differently. It should be Do online stuff, get basic skills/qual. Then do "homework" type tasking, then come to class with an instructor. We got the traditional "start from 0, then step 1, then step 2..." training. This usually saps energy/focus. All training should be like a lab/practice session. If someone needs information or basic knowledge ... put it in a elearning, FAQ, job aid, or resource page.
The in-person training was comprehensive enough to get you started, but I strongly recommend having a more experienced person when beginning with the tool.
Should have more of this for the 101-level stuff. No one needs a Zoom class covering the basics. I need a "guide on the side" when I'm learning new stuff. I want support while I practice.
Webtrends provides several free webinars over the course of the year, many of which I would expect to pay for. The people providing the webinars seem to have a good feel for real-world application of the product.
Careful planning and patience. Use a non-public test site to fine tune tags and reporting. Despite best laid plans, there will be surprises when you collect the data, run the analysis and begin generating reports using the tool. Perform a tag audit to ensure tags fire as desired.
So far, it is hard to see the advantage of CJA over GA4. However I have not had enough experience and training yet to be sure. Also, we have not taken full advantage of CJA yet. Another tool we use is Microsoft Clarity, which (for a free service) is quite powerful.
Webtrends has its work cut out for itself considering you have the behemoth Google Analytics and Google Analytics Premium having a strong offering and brand recognition for the price of free. After reviewing the paid service I'd suggest you start off with GA as a cheaper alternative that is just as robust, if not much more flexible in regards to the reporting and goal tracking needs for our company.
You have the ability to create 'user groups' with different levels of access in CJA. We helped set this up for a large organiztion where they had marketers, executives, devs and analysts all having different levels of access to use CJA but with the appropriate guardrails in place for each user group. It worked out really well for their organization.
Currently, the ROI is a bit extended as our use cases are a bit more complex than the average use case (but we are in active discussions with Adobe Product to improve)
The Adobe Customer Journey Analytics implementation has directly contributed to our company's ability to speak to enterprise orientation, we have seen customer omni-channel presence go up 5% in just one year
Webtrends has had a positive impact on site visitation because it allowed us to understand the sources by domain for site traffic and find out ways to increase visits from those domains.
Webtrends has also allowed us to understand areas of optimization on the site, which has had a positive impact on the overall user journey on the site, likely leading to longer site duration and engagement.
