Coremetrics / IBM Digital Analytics (discontinued) vs. Google Analytics vs. RavenTools

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

Google Analytics is particularly well suited for tracking and analyzing customer behavior on a grocery e-commerce platform. It provides a wealth of information about customer behavior, including what products are most popular, what pages are visited the most, and where customers are coming from. This information can help the platform optimize its website for better customer engagement and conversion rates. However, Google Analytics may not be the best tool for more advanced, granular analysis of customer behavior, such as tracking individual customer journeys or understanding customer motivations. In these cases, it may be more appropriate to use additional tools or solutions that provide deeper insights into customer behavior.

If you are looking for a one-stop shop for MOST things related to digital marketing, RavenTools is a great solution. You will be able to monitor social media, Google tools, email campaigns, and much more from one spot. It really cuts down on time spent moving from account to account. If you are looking for clean and easy to read reports for clients, RavenTools is perfect for that as well. It provides tools and reports that can be used by internal and external teams alike.

• 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

• Multiple reports to see website use and behavior
• Allows you to customize reports with days, weeks, months, and years
• You can build out a dashboard to easily view stats from multiple websites in one place
• You can share analytics reports via the dashboard, automatically emailed PDFs or in other formats

Incentivized

• RavenTools has teamed up with SEO services like Moz and Magestic SEO to provide detailed data about the SEO health of your own websites as well as how they compare to your competitors' websites. I can directly compare number of backlinks, page speed, domain authority, integration of Google Analytics, presence of robots.txt files, on-site social media engagement, and home page load time. This a great way to get an idea of how your site stacks up against others and what can be done to improve it.
• RavenTools' automated reports are mostly great (I'll cover the negatives later). You can create reports with as much data as you would like and schedule them to arrive as often as you would like. I have SEO, social media, and site performance reports delivered to my team and me every Monday covering the last 10 days, and a broader quarterly report arrives in the inboxes of a few executives once a quarter.
• RavenTools' graphs are often easier to read and decipher than graphs found in Google Analytics. Part of the reason is the graph height. Google Analytics graphs are fairly short, so it's difficult to see smaller variations in the data. Those variations are more pronounced within RavenTools using the data.

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.

• Data sampling is somewhat inaccurate on the free tier - this is addressed in premium but is expensive.
• Some of the UI is very similar in naming when presenting different data, some in-situ information might be useful.
• Gotchas around filtering and data validation.
• Implementation can be tricky, it can take a lot of time and expertise to get a full, accurate picture of your metrics.

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• The data it gets from Webmaster Tools and Analytics is great and reporting on it is easy - however, when you're looking at the charts for keyword placement on screen the graphic can be hard to read and often I find myself just checking GWT and BWT separately for easier information if no report needs to be generated.
• RavenTools comes with an iPhone app so you can check on your campaigns and clients when you're not at your desk, however, the app crashes quite a bit when you get to the Google Analytics portion of the screen.

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

We will continue to use Google Analytics for several reasons. It is free, which is a huge selling point. It houses all of our ecommerce stores' data, and though it can't account for refunds or fraud orders, gives us and our clients directional, real time information on individual and group store performance.

Incentivized

A year ago or so, Raven abandoned many of their organic rank reporting tools in an attempt to favor some Adwords intelligence. The market rebelled, as did I; in our desperation to find an alternative to Raven, none could be found and a great majority of users didn't want/need Adwords data. Months later, Raven reverted. I'd renew with Raven not just because nothing else cuts it, but because they are both trying to innovate, and listening to customers.

Very easy to implement and use.

Google Analytics provides a wealth of data, down to minute levels. That is it's greatest detriment: find the right information when you need it can be a cumbersome task. You are able to create shortcuts, however, so it can mitigate some of this problem. Google is continually refining Analytics, so I do not doubt there will be improvements

Certain areas, Social Media scheduling, could stand to undergo a complete overhaul. However, most of the RavenTools interface is easy to use. You will not have any issues getting up and running and should there be an issue, the customer service is really good. They also continue to preform updates that make the usability even better

Never had any issues

We all know Google is at top when it comes to availability. We have never faced any such instances where I can suggest otherwise. All you need is a Google account, a device and internet connection to use this super powerful tool for reporting and visualising your site data, traffic, events, etc. that too in real time.

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.

This has been a catalyst for improving our site's traffic handling capabilities. We were able to identify exit% from our sites through it and we used recommendations to handle and implement the same in our sites. We have been increasing the usage of Google Analytics in our sites and never had any performance related issues if we used Analytics

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.

The Google reps respond very quickly. However, sometimes they can overly call you to set up an apportionment. I'm very proficient and sometimes when I talk to reps, they give beginner tutorials and insights that are a waste of time. I wish Google would understand my level of expertise and assign me to a rep (long-term) that doesn't have to walk me through the basics.

Incentivized

RavenTools has some of the best Customer Support I have ever received. They are quick to respond and will keep you posted on the progress of your issue. You truly feel as if you are getting customized service. No human is perfect and I have had one situation in which I had to reach out multiple times, but overall I fully trust and approve of their process

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.

love the product and training they provide for businesses of all sizes. The following list of links will help you get started with Google Analytics from setup to understanding what data is being presented by Google Analytics.

1. How to Use Google Analytics for Beginners – Mahalo’s how-to guide for beginners.
2. A beginner’s guide to Google Analytics – A free eBook walking you through Google Analytics from setup to understanding what data is being presented.
3. Getting to Know Your Google Analytics Dashboard – The title says it all! This is a brief post with one goal: to introduce you to the Google Analytics dashboard.
4. Google Analytics for Beginners: How to Make the Most of Your Traffic Reports– This guide doesn’t cover setup, but it does a great job of helping you to better understand the data being presented.
5. Google Analytics Video Tutorial 1: Setup – A video presentation that walks you through Google Analytics setup.
6. Google Analytics Video Tutorial 2: Essential Stats – A video presentation that introduces you to some of the most important data being presented in Google Analytics.

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

I think my biggest take away from the Google Analytics implementation was that there needs to be a clear understanding of what you want to achieve and how you want to achieve it before you start. Originally the analytics were added to track visitors, but as we became more savvy with the product, we began adding more and more functionality, and defining guidelines as we went along. While not detrimental to our success, this lack of an overarching goal resulted in some minor setbacks in implementation and the collection of some messy data that is unusable.

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.

I have not used Adobe Analytics as much, but I know they offer something called customer journey analytics, which we are evaluating now. I have used Semrush, and I find them much better than Google Analytics. I feel a fairly nontechnical person could learn Semrush in about a month. They also offer features like competitive analysis (on content, keywords, traffic, etc.), which is very useful. If you have to choose one among Semrush and Google Analytics, I would say go for Semrush.

Incentivized

I don't have a lot of experience with other tools although we have had a lot of demos of other products. We have often found that by utilizing features in Raven that we didn't know about we could have the same functionality without using another reporting tool. This allows us to continue using one integrated reporting tool.

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.

Google Analytics is currently handling the reporting and tracking of near about 80 sites in our project. And I am not talking about the sites from different projects. They may have way more accounts than that. Never ever felt a performance issue from Google's end while generating or customising reports or tracking custom events or creating custom dimensions

• 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

• It has helped us gain understanding of what is going on on our website.
• It has helped us determine areas that need fixing (i.e. pages with extremely high bounce rates may need to be redone).
• It has helped us understand our biggest avenues for bringing traffic to the website and business in general.
• It has helped guide our website redesign.

Incentivized

• RavenTools has been invaluable in helping us improve ranking through website audits. The ease with which we can correct issues once they arise has resulted in approximately 35% increased productivity from our audit team.
• It would be helpful if the reports were nice enough that they could be customer-facing. We have to put the data into our own reporting forms for customer presentation.

Incentivized