Webtrends Analytics vs. Ziflow

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?

We work with a lot of cross functional teams, so it is nice to have them review things on their own and provide feedback all in the one place for our team to review. It helps cut back on meetings and emails full of feedback that gets lost. This is especially helpful when we are working on our catalogs. We do reviews on Ziflow all the way from rough layouts to proofreading.

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• 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.

• Simple and user friendly interface with little if no learning curve.
• Accurate and specific change requests are especially enhanced when using the markup tools.
• Nice to be able to assign who the decision maker is and also be able to change project participants easily, like when someone goes on holiday or sick leave.
• SOCD (sent, opened, comment, decision) progress indicators provide an awesome 'at a glance' view of project participants activity.
• Email notifications and integration with ASANA is brilliant.

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• 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.

• Comments with instances that span multiple pages force you to zoom out, which can be rough on multi-page proofs. We end up making a comment on each instance for ease of review.
• Maybe it is in there, but I would love to be able to upload a new version and review/make comments before any of the other reviewers can see it—to double-check for errors. Maybe there is a verification stage first before releasing it to the other reviewers.

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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.

Ziflow is easy to use, efficient and now is also part of our daily lives. Hence, the teams are already adapted to the tool and willing to work with it. The features are according to all what was expected and we had a great experience until the moment with the tool

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

The tool is easy to use for digital oriented people. For the ones not used to this kind of environment, it could look a bit complicated at the beginning, but following the instructions and tutorials and performing it once makes you get a grip of it in just one use.

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 ZIflow support team has always been very responsive to my questions, issues and other problems. The good thing is I have never had to use their support team all that much because Ziflow has been for the most part trouble free. If it had been error prone, we would have dropped it long ago.

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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.

They were friendly and took the time to go through everything, especially relating to how we would use the system.

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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.

It was seemless! Things got instantly better when we started using Ziflow!

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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.

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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 found Ziflow to be much better than PageProof in several ways. The tools available for making comments and edits are more intuitive and there is a greater variety of tools and the version control features worked much better as well. Also their customer service was far better when it was necessary to interact with the company

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• 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.

• Improved efficiency and time saved in making proofs and adding people to proofs with staging and template features.
• Robust proofreading features for reviewers like comparing previous versions.
• In my experience, customer service is quick to help with issues or outages (which aren't often).

Incentivized

Invited by the Vendor

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