Google Analytics vs. Google RCS Business Messaging vs. Webtrends Analytics

Honesty, there is no reason that a company wouldn’t want to implement Google Analytics. The regular version is completely free, is very easy to configure, and provides immense volumes of website data. There are also tangible benefits to the other Google tools it can connect to, and it integrates with any BI/data platform that you might use. The only time I’d advise not using standard Google Analytics is if you’ve purchased Google Analytics 360.

Incentivized

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?

• 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

• Webtrends Analytics makes complex situations understandable to a non-technical audience. The vast capabilities and ways to slice data is both a great tool, but can also cause a user/users many hours of frustration.
• Visual data display is clean, to the point, and not overly convoluted with unneeded variables and standard (defualt) settings. Everything the end user sees is customizeable.
• Exports of raw data collections was easy and accurate. Once the parameters of data collection are finally set up and working, its easy to get what you want from the UI and is delievered in a variety of options.

• While raw data is nice to have, I do wish there was an easier way to provide reports from Google Analytics directly. Something that could answer questions straight-forward for people.
• I would appreciate "helpful hints" or a cheat sheet of some sort, so when quickly searching for something such as time on a certain page, I can find it quickly.
• I really don't have a third point!

Incentivized

• Webtrends is not great at providing statistical data for analysis. You need to enable Log File Delivery or create an analysis export to perform this. This could theoretically be done with Streams.
• Webtrends has difficulty identifying multi-visit users due to the inherent fragility of cookie-based tracking.
• Webtrends Analytics does not provide Pathing capabilities for segments, only for the aggregate. However, this can be worked around with Scenario functionality selectively fired by a tag management system.
• Segmentation by high-cardinality parameters tends to cause issues with table limits. Even after scrubbing and scrutinizing data, we commonly see up of 10K rows per dimension. Due to this, we use Webtrends Analytics to roll up data into larger segments and export all of our log data into our database for heavy duty number crunching.

Having used Google Analytics for the last 9 years, I have no intention of discontinuing my service. Google Analytics is a fantastic product that provides me with almost everything I could wish for. The positives in this product outweigh any negatives that you might find. I can not think of a single reason to not immediately start using Google Analytics for your business.

The obstacles to renewing are 1) finding people to manage it who know it well and 2) frustration because of the lack of on-the-fly analysis. Usually, renewal prices are reasonable and the cost of switching to something else when you have a somewhat complicated setup far outweigh the renewal costs, especially if your implementation is sound and your reports are humming along. A lot of renewal decisions are going to hinge on the new product that will start to roll out this month.

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

The Webtrends Support Engineers are expert at what they do, and we get to speak to someone on the support team quickly. They provide great solutions when available, and when there is no solution, which can happen, they describe work-arounds.

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.

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.

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.

Make sure to put the tracking code on every page. Ideally this would be part of a template or "include" so you can update the code on all pages (or at least within pages of the same category) at once.

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.

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

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

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

• Great for visualizing website drop-off pages to theories and test update/iterations.
• Bounce rates on pages to pinpoint bugs and issues.
• Inaccuracy can lead to incorrect conclusions and decisions around CRO.
• Segments can be very useful for validating split testing, providing a free tracking of variation vs. control - great ROI.

Incentivized

• 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.