Webtrends Analytics

Webtrends Analytics is well suited for tracking standard traffic and engagement metrics such as sessions, pageviews, visitors, time spent, bounce rate, etc. It is not the best tool for tracking single page applications built using Ajax where content of a page may change without changing the url. Or, to track more complex e-commerce metrics such as adds to cart and average order value. Business intelligence tools are better suited to track sales metrics.

Webtrends is great if you are looking for IP analyst web data without heavy levels of UI glut to interfere with your exploration of the data. We used Webtrends extensively to mine user behavior for our various webpages and to track referrals from the many clubs we manage. Tying this data back to other reports was very easy.

It's well suited for analysing many sites across many locations.

Webtrends Streams has been huge to see visitor data almost instantly.

The drawback of not having on-the-fly segmenting and drill-downs makes the difference between a 7 and a 10 here. In another month, after I've worked with the new Webtrends Explore product, I'll come back and re-score this.

Other than that ....

The ability of the standard product to re-analyze back to 90 days is a huge differentiator.

If you want some really finely-honed filters, content groups, etc Webtrends probably has the flexibility to set them up exactly as you want, by configuring them in the UI. This is really Webtrends' strength - once you know what you want, you can almost always get it out of Webtrends, fix it in place, and get great insights.

Over time, Webtrends has added a lot of parameters to the data that its tag collects and you can do a lot with them. Webtrends' weakness, at this point, is that you have to do some thinking ahead for those finely focused reports. Of course, there are zillions of out of the box reports that area ready to go.

Also, if you won't accept the usual SaaS model where your data is held elsewhere, Webtrends Analytics On Premises is just about the only thing out there that has any power. Ditto for needing to re-analyze data going really far back, or analyzing server log data.

If you don't have a lot of IS support, meaning the ability to create code changes in the site when you want to change some of the configurations, Webtrends' smart tag and the many options in the admin UI can save you. (Don't let tag management vendors make you think that you won't still need IS all the time. You may not need IS per se, but you will need a technically savvy person to run the tag management!)

Webtrends analytics is an analytical tool I would strongly recommend to companies that are at the enterprise level as there are more affordable and robust solutions such as Google Analytics that does not charge a fee. (That is until your website receives an amount of traffic that exceeds their free version).

The analytics only includes a single depth of visits (you need Visitor Data Mart for multiple visits). Also, the depth of action analysis is limited to single action (you need Visitor Data Mart for multi-actions). Moreover, the depth of visitor knowledge is limited (you need Visitor Data Mart for deep and/or lifetime). Lastly the visitor segmentation has to be predefined (you need Visitor Data Mart so it's dynamic and real-time). In the end, you only have a basic site measurement with a view on key metrics and custom reports.

Webtrends has quickly fallen behind the clear leader (Adobe's SiteCatalyst), and I would even place them behind the free version of Google Analytics at this point.

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?

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 On Premises product requires dedicated hardware and software resources. All versions require careful planning, setup and implementation to get reports which go beyond hits and visits.

Most of the time even highly complex issues are handled on the same call. I want to cite one support rep, Marlo, by name because he is phenomenally through and a product expert. When he answered my calls I felt better immediately.

At the time Webtrends was an enterprise product that had a strong team behind it but cost would be an issue for small and medium-sized organizations.

It all depends on the users. For power users who know how to implement and tweak the tool to work for their needs, it is a great option because you save time and money by building something truly to suite your needs. However, for general users (like marketing analysts), other tools may be easier to learn.

It would depend on what type of information they are looking for. If they are looking for webpage/site metrics my likelihood of recommending the tool would be an 8.

I would ask who their client is, what their objectives are and what type of data they are most interested in analyzing. Also, how tight of turnarounds do you have? Webtrends needs a LONG time to turn complex projects around, especially if you are thinking about multi-touch attribution -> forget about it if you need anything less than 6 months.

It all depends on the colleague's function.

If the colleague is in marketing like me: I do most of my reporting through Tableau now, and Google Analytics allows me to pull the data directly into the program without downloading to an Excel file first. This is a big issue for me. If Webtrends can get themselves included on Tableau, I would be more apt to recommend it.

If the colleague is in IT, I would recommend with the caveat that they have to be flexible and talk to the other portions of their organization to ensure that reporting is optimized for all departments.

If the colleague is in finance, I would say that it's a good investment from the customer service standpoint. Omniture tends to be more expensive (Google Analytics Premium is definitely more expensive) so you need to see how your organization is going to use the information. Sometimes a business only needs the free version of Google Analytics, the work is not data intensive at that point and it's not worth the money.

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.

WebTrends day-to-day tech support is generally very good, and they are also good with escalating issues when necessary.

It's inferior to Adobe Omniture in almost every way, but is better than Google Analytics and is fairly easy to implement.

It's well suited for most types of reporting that we do, whether that's ad-hoc reports, campaign reports, email reports, right up to monthly and quarterly reports that require dashboards. It also integrates with many other systems, including social media analytics. We are also customers of Webtrends Optimise (for A/B testing), and the segments and data from this also integrate with Webtrends Infinity - which is really handy. The only thing Webtrends can't do at the moment is to integrate with Hotjar.

Our organization implemented Webtrends as software that we ran on our own servers, rather than as a service. This made the maintenance more cumbersome than necessary. I feel as though Webtrends has not been able to keep up with other web analytics services.

I highly recommend WebTrends, but would suggest the On Demand version.

We've always had great support from WebTrends.

Compared to Coremetrics or Google Analytics, I definitely would not recommend as Webtrends is much more complicated to use and less flexible.

Adobe Analytics (formerly Omniture) is by far best in class. Even their Marketing Summit goes above and beyond. Google Analytics is actually a solid choice as well -- the free version is fine if you have less than 10,000,000 "hits" a month, otherwise sampling hits. Premium allows for many other tools too -- Big Query being a huge benefit. You also don't have sampled data with the Premium version.

The support team (calling into the support line) is very knowledgeable and friendly. The issue is that you have to call in so often.

Not sure what is meant by selection process.

If you're going to make the decision to implement this type of tool into your company, I'd recommend checking out Omniture and Google Analytics as well before making your decision. WebTrends seems to have had their heyday.