1. Home
  2. Web Analytics Tools
  3. Webtrends Analytics Reviews
  4. User Review of Webtrends Analytics
The promise of a powerful analytics tool which was deceiving
Updated March 18, 2015

The promise of a powerful analytics tool which was deceiving

Matthieu Dejardins | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 3 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Software Version

On Demand

Overall Satisfaction with Webtrends Analytics

We implemented Webtrends on 9 (with the promise of taking advantage of the version 10 release) on our 8 top website domains out of 32.

It was used in addition to other existing Analytics tools: Google Analytics and Tealeaf.

Our goal was to solve the following business problems:
  1. Campaign tracking supporting our redirecting structure
  2. Multiple currency handling under the same domain name
  3. Absence of data sampling 50,000 URLs/day or 500,000
    visits/month
  4. Acceptable reporting performance speed
  5. Funnel analysis options
  6. Data import and 3rd
    party integration (ESP)
  7. Data export capabilities to other BI solutions (EDW)
  8. Visitor segmentation (personalization)
  9. Data ownership (client vs. vendor)
  10. Service Level Agreement (SLA)
  • Don't ask you to pay for both collected and analyzed data
  • Custom reporting: ability to leverage tracking and create meaningful reports for Business users
  • The product itself was very slow (9) or buggy (10)
  • The ability to create new custom reports complex (consultant needed and can not apply historical data without replay)
  • The possibility to drill-down data limited and not dynamic (segments, funnels, goals)
  • The UI is rudimentary (9) or visually overwhelming (10) without thinking about functionality (advanced segmentation)
  • Webtrends Analytics lacks sophistication and speed. This considerably compromised the massive adoption within the organization while I trained more than 100 people. Most of the users preferred Google Analytics for its simplicity of use and analysis capability.
  • Lastly, as a previous user of Adobe Omniture Analytics, Webrends is cheaper and easier but the insights you're getting out of the solution are not so actionable if you customize your solution to tackle pain points: content group analysis, various funnel scenarios, link tracking on key pages (home, key destination pages), onsite search with Endeca, product attributes...
  • Adobe Analytics,Google Analytics
Webtrends was selected because of the price for Google Analytics Premium ($110k per year) and Adobe Omniture Analytics (twice the price). Clearly, it needed the Visitor Data Mart to get additional capability that you would expect as part of a Web Analytics suite. In our case, Google Analytics Premium was probably the best move in terms of value and pricing.
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.

Using Webtrends Analytics

The contract has been renewed because of the investment we put in implementing and stabilizing the solution (8 months). However, with the previous points discussed, I'm not sure that it was the best choice initially as well as over time for the company. Speak to existing clients and your peers before you make such a choice.

Using Webtrends Analytics