data.ai (formerly App Annie) is a mobile data and analytics platform designed to help customers create winning mobile experiences and achieve excellence. Founded in 2010, the company launched their mobile market data solution and in 2019 acquired Libring, an advertising monetization and spend offering, to expand their capabilities and comprise a complete mobile performance platform. The vendor boasts more than 1,100 enterprise clients and 1 million registered users across all geographies and…
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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.
I think that App Annie will be handy for the companies that provide service in multiple countries - so they have to deal with local competitors research and track the performance of the app (by the position and by the reviews) in different stores. I think that for a one-country app, many of the features will be less relevant. At the same time, App Annie offers custom plans, so I see how the user experience can be different.
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?
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.
App Annie is extremely limited if you are on the free plan. While you can garner some golden nuggets from the free plan, it's extremely difficult to make needle moving decisions based on the free data. It would be great if App Annie would disclose pricing on their website, plus have a non-free/enterprise plan were you could pick and choose features they offer.
After nearly considering a paid plan with App Annie, I decided not to purchase because of the broken trust that stemmed from their sales team. I often got cold-calls from their reps - even when I never contacted them for a sales member to call me. I was bombarded for about 2 weeks straight with phone calls and hard-core sales emails with just asking to talk, no questions or personalization. This cold, unwanted and unwelcome outreach solidified my decision not to purchase.
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.
Well the fact that the freemium features are all that I need right now, I will most definitely continue to use it on a daily basis. I might upgrade to the pro version in the future if I need more data than what I am getting now. But for now it works great for what I need.
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.
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
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.
I have not had to contact support a lot of times. The few times I did, I got correct and lengthy responses, but they took some time to answer. Their product is very complete, so unless you have a specific question, you will probably not need to contact support at any time.
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
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.
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.
We use Google 360 and are able to do a much deeper dive into the activity we see on our apps. I think App Annie is a great starting point product, but for more in depth analytics, something like a Google 360 or Adobe might be better.
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.
App Annie has had neither a positive nor negative impact on our ROI or business objectives. Our team currently uses their free, very limited plan for data discrepancy with our main ASO tool. Otherwise, we have connected our apps and let the data flow in. We go in the account about once every 2-3 months.
With App Annie's data we have solidified that our other paid ASO tool we use has accurate data and that we will continue to pay for that tool. So in that regards, App Annie's provided us with a confirmation in our competitor ASO tool purchase decision.
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.
