Convert Experiences vs. Webtrends Analytics

Definitely well suited for budget conscious companies that want a solid array of functionality but without having to pay an exorbitant amount. Great for marketing and analytics team members that need the ability to get in and set up tests w/o dev assistance. But, functionality is there for developers to get in and set up more complicated tests.

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?

• Over the top powerful Javascript enabled targeting. This feature is called DMP Profiling and is available in the Pro Plan, currently only +$100 more than the plus plan. An article explaining this feature is here for further reading: https://convert.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/206631623-Target-experiment-based-on-a-custom-Javascript-condition-that-evaluates-true-at-a-later-stage. I wrote up a much longer explanation but TR broke it up weirdly. The gist is that you can powerfully use JS to target. This allows me to target users in our SPA in incredibly advanced ways. I can walk their entire history model and assign them an audience value, or I can exclude them. It's MUCH more powerful than just a "Site Area" tool. We recently used it against 900K users to check if they had written a review of their apartment or not yet. This allowed me to only expose the user on the homepage to an experiment that prompted them to write a review while excluding users that couldn't write a review from the experiment (because they had already written one). The experiment converted 50% better than what we do now, generating 9k reviews in a matter of hours.
• Audience targeting IN ADDITION to all that fancy DMP targeting. This means I can define demographics or other data as a qualifier AS WELL as the previously mentioned qualifier. This can be setup in so many ways: Traffic source, Visitor Data, Include / Exclude users part of a current experiment (!!), Date/Time, Device/Browser/OS, JS Conditon
• Real-time reporting that makes sense to the whole company to view. Seriously, I can share a Convert Report to any level of intelligence on my team and they understand what's happening.
• Audiences and Goals are saved as presets, so your entire team can use them. Using the example above, we have an audience called "Wrote a Review" that we exclude from the Review Prompt treatments.
• Their customer support is seriously fast at answering questions. I've never had to wait more than a day.

• 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.

• We are aggressive testers and have demanding clients, and if there was any part of the Convert platform where I'd like to see improvement, it would be in the reporting section where I feel a vertical report could present in a more readable fashion to the users.

• 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.

Couldn't live without this, no other tool does precisely what we need them to do

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.

To use the platform in the context of developing enhanced tests that stretch the platform there is as with most things a learning curve. However, if you're a casual user or have standard experiments that you wish to run you would be easily able to hit the ground running.

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

It is much better than average. Down time usually occurs because of a need to refresh the server on our end.

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 use support only in very emergency cases. The support hasn't been very helpful and suggests the problem is on my site

Incentivized

Independently Invited by TrustRadius

A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info

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.

Convert was selected based on price point, feature set, and UI/UX. All three are very friendly to new testers and small to mid-market size companies. Their UI and tool workflow is the best out of all of the non-enterprise solutions that I have tried. There is some small room for improvement, but that only really affects power users or tests that require significant coding/development work to execute.

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.

Incentivized

Independently Invited by TrustRadius

A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info

• Using Convert has allowed us to make quick decisions on site edits and price changes. Seeing and sharing quick results makes our operations much more profitable.
• Connecting the tests with Shopify has produced very valuable and timely results that we can act upon as soon as we see statistically significant results.

• 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.