Glassbox vs. Webtrends Analytics

I’ve found that Glassbox is particularly well-suited during marketing campaigns, because you can export and analyze data in real-time, track the campaign’s effectiveness, and gain immediate insight into how customers are interacting with your website. With these insights, we’re able to tweak campaigns on the fly to increase engagement and conversion rates. Similarly, since Glassbox allows us to monitor customer interactions in real-time, we gain immediate feedback on how our users are engaging with a new digital feature on our platform, for example. We can then quickly identify any usability issues or friction points, make adjustments in real-time to improve the user experience, and maximize the success of the new feature.

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?

• Enables businesses to immediately detect and resolve issues, through real-time monitoring and alerts.
• Reduces abandonment rates by identifying the point of friction and making suggestions for how to resolve it.
• Provides visual tools that show a user's clicks, scrolls, and hovers, offering loads of insight into customer behavior.

• 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.

• It's a pretty powerful platform, and my sense is that most users don't utilize it to its fullest potential. Glassbox could help by offering a more comprehensive onboarding program (maybe even customized training sessions or live workshops tailored to the needs and use cases of FSIs)

• 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.

The level of support from the Glassbox team and how much we have improved our conversion just after a few months

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.

Glassbox is very easy to use, and with the AI features which it has inside, it has been very easy for us to not only find the relevant sessions but also summarize them and interact with the summary - so we now have all types of people in our org who use Glassbox - including those who are purely non-tech. Also, I must give a huge shoutout to our customer support team who have been instrumental in helping us get value from Glassbox

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 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.

Glassbox is a customer experience management platform that provides various tools to help organizations understand and improve the customer journey. There may be other products that offer similar capabilities, such as FullStory, UserTesting, and Clicktale. These products may provide similar features, such as session replay, advanced analytics, and integration with other tools. It is important for organizations to carefully evaluate the specific needs and goals of their business and choose a product that aligns with those objectives.

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

• Glassbox has really taken us to the next level in terms of customer sentiment analysis and informed decision-making. We're capturing 100% of customer sessions, and with Glassbox we're able to address hidden issues and make decisions that enhance the experience of our entire customer base, as opposed to just a select few. Our strategic decisions are now based on accurate, comprehensive data, and we're seeing the fruits of this. Our customers are more engaged (and more loyal), our conversion rates are climbing, and our business is growing.

• 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.