Adobe Analytics - Still the leader in third-party analytics
May 07, 2014
Adobe Analytics - Still the leader in third-party analytics
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Software Version
15
Overall Satisfaction with Adobe Analytics
Currently, Adobe Analytics (AA) is the go-to analytcs tool for my entire company alongside several other basic third-party tracking pixels. We use AA to track conversions, marketing campaigns, user interaction, as well as for the building of dashboards and ad hoc analysis. This, combined with our team analytics team that leverages Ad Hoc Analysis with AA, provides very comprehensive overage of our analytics needs.
The primary business problems we use AA to address are release testing (usage of site features), purchase activity, and marketing campaign success. We also track other general metrics such as Bounce Rates, Visits/Visitors, Registrations, etc.
The primary business problems we use AA to address are release testing (usage of site features), purchase activity, and marketing campaign success. We also track other general metrics such as Bounce Rates, Visits/Visitors, Registrations, etc.
- Provides an interface that is easy to navigate and explain to general users
- Offers data extraction and automation through Data Warehouse
- Provides a baseline-architecture with the ability to customize when needed
- Ability to integrate with Adobe Target and other tools
- The ability to segment and run breakdowns/correlations/subrelations provides access to a great deal with granularity in reporting
- Sometimes, the default number of variables is not enough
- With AA v15, some of the organization within the dropdowns has become less clear
- Dashboards in the tool aren't always unique to the user and persist across profiles (could use more customization for this)
- Allows for cross-checking of data
- Increased interest in analytics across the company
- Better understanding of feature success
- Does require dev support
- Can be complex to troubleshoot
I have been both a power user and implementation engineer for Webtrends products, with varying degrees of success over the years. With the growing market for third-party analytics tools offering increasingly user-friendly interfaces and approaches to architecting implementations, these companies need to be on top of their games when selecting features and the degree of customization available. In general, I see more companies leaning toward SiteCatalyst in the current web-space, and for some good reason.
Most analytics tools offer similar capabilities: clicks, events, variables, segments, correlations, filtering, heatmaps, etc. The key differentiation is now ease of access, setup, and usage so that tech-savvy folks have a means to customize but general users can still feel enabled to perform. With Webtrends, this is not as apparent in their mixture as it is with, say, SiteCatalyst. Webtrends offers a great deal of flexibility with variables and naming compared with some competitors, and their UI's are improving, but as an out of the box tool it can be overwhelming. They win on price-point and user support, I must say, but it does not always make up for the lack of usability design flaws.
So there is a decision to make for every company when considering this tool: on the one hand, you may get more attention and save $$$ by opting for Webtrends, but the implementation is tougher and setup is more blank-slate than some other options. SiteCatalyst has more reporting/sending options, access to their data warehouse, and better dashboard abilities, but you pay a premium for this.
Most analytics tools offer similar capabilities: clicks, events, variables, segments, correlations, filtering, heatmaps, etc. The key differentiation is now ease of access, setup, and usage so that tech-savvy folks have a means to customize but general users can still feel enabled to perform. With Webtrends, this is not as apparent in their mixture as it is with, say, SiteCatalyst. Webtrends offers a great deal of flexibility with variables and naming compared with some competitors, and their UI's are improving, but as an out of the box tool it can be overwhelming. They win on price-point and user support, I must say, but it does not always make up for the lack of usability design flaws.
So there is a decision to make for every company when considering this tool: on the one hand, you may get more attention and save $$$ by opting for Webtrends, but the implementation is tougher and setup is more blank-slate than some other options. SiteCatalyst has more reporting/sending options, access to their data warehouse, and better dashboard abilities, but you pay a premium for this.