Coremetrics / IBM Digital Analytics (discontinued) vs. Mouseflow vs. Smartlook

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

Mouseflow is a great when you're working in a busy product development or conversion optimisation environment, and want to understand exactly how customers are interacting with your site or app so you can respond. It's a capable tool that offers some great insight at a fraction of the cost of competitors like SessionCam or ClickTale. It has occasional problems in captures that its competitors suffer from less often, but if you're looking for a general understanding of usage then this is a great tool. It doesn't have built-in integrations with all A/B testing tools, but it does have a built-in Google Tag Manager tag so its very easy to set up without assistance. If you've got the budget to select reliability over cost, then you may choose to opt for a more mature, enterprise offering. But if your budget is limited, or you're just looking to prove the value of session recording as a concept, then Mouseflow will more than do the job.

Incentivized

Smartlook is best for screen recordings. Especially when you are running MVPs. However, its pricing is very high. If your daily visitors are too much then either you will have to lose many of your recordings or you will have to pay too much money.

Incentivized

• 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

• Mouseflow does a great job creating wonderful Heat Maps. These allow you to really see how people are interacting with a page. Great data if you want to create better flow in your pages.
• The User Session Recordings are also especially useful and when used in conjunction with the heat maps you can really get a feel and a look at how a page is working. This lets you see where people get stuck, elements that might be distracting, etc.
• In the area of the heat maps Mouseflow can handle A/B testing which I think is priceless.
• Another advantage to Mouseflow is that unlike many of these types of tools Mouseflow integrates with most Web platforms, well beyond WordPress.

Incentivized

• Funnels are both easy to configure yet comprehensive enough to detect complicated customer journeys.
• Real-time recording provides exceptional insights to our design & engineering teams.
• Session recording is surprisingly lightweight and seems to cause no substantial performance degradation for our customers.

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.

• Free version could have more features.
• Should be optimized for a better view on mobile devices.
• Although it provides a complete list of data, it is not able to capture certain sessions.

• I feel nickel and dimed with the events and funnels.
• We came from sessions being 30 mins of inactivity and now it's 5-10 mins. Session count has gone up significantly which we weren't prepared for.
• Recording playback isn't as clean and maneuverable like FullStory.

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

As my ratings show, I have been absolutely delighted with Smartlook in terms of usability, cost, support, and its benefit to our organization. I have given it such high ratings because I think it has really benefitted our organization and I think it could do the same for other companies too.

Incentivized

Very easy to implement and use.

Mouseflow is pretty easy to use. You need to be a core technical person to implement it on your site. Mouseflow provided us a tracking code that need to be installed on the website, and if do not have the knowledge of how to work on the backend of the website, you will not be able to install it. Here you will need the help of a technical person who has a good knowledge of your website platform to install the code on the website. There are also videos available giving insight on how to use the Mouseflow platform. I personally haven't faced any problem while using Mouseflow. Just login to this tool and a dashboard will open in front of you.

Every page, the tool setup pages and dashboards are built very well, the site structure is perfectly designed and intuitive to use. All functions are well documented and the help sections are really everywhere, you don't have to search for answers, as they are just popped up or max. a click away for your service.

Incentivized

Never had any issues

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.

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.

This is an area where Mouseflow is quite strong. Not only is the support good but they also have some very good training on the use of the product. There is a nicely laid out section of videos that not only cover the use of the tools functions but also how to use the data that Mouseflow produces. They are doing well in the support area.

Incentivized

Sofia P. is being our point of contact with the issues we faced. I was unsure about how to explain to her what was going on with the recording numbers (the recording has stopped before we were expecting to), but she readily understood and came with a solution for us in the same day. The problem was blocking our developer to test the integration, so it was great to have support so fast that he could continue his work.

Incentivized

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.

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

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.

Mouseflow is a supplement to Google Analytics and improves on some Analytics functions. Mouseflow adds qualitative data to the quantitative data that Analytics provides to help marketers better understand their website visitors

Incentivized

It has been a year between the time when I last used Hotjar and first started using Smartlook. I would say both tools are more or less equal when it comes to features, the only 2 differences I can think of are - price and customer support. Smartlook is cheaper and has superior customer services. You have the feeling when interacting with them that they genuinely care.

Incentivized

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.

• 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

• MouseFlow makes a positive impact on our future marketing decisions. We recently had a change in formula for a product and added a variety of ways for people to read about the changes via our website. Mouseflow allowed us to see which method was effective in communicating our message. We were able to replicate the style on other digital platforms.
• Mouseflow allows us to save time we would normally spend in developing a website. For example, before building a new website I will spend a couple of weeks analyzing user data via mouseflow. I can clearly see what features are not currently working and where we are loosing people in the current process. This cuts down website revisions by about 10%

Incentivized

• Smartlook is used by different individuals from different organizations to have insights into different parts of products. It is used as the sole developer of our website as well as marketing campaigns.
• Smartlook has an amazing feature which is tracking the activities of return users.
• It gives reliable and efficient services.

Incentivized