Google Analytics 360 (discontinued) vs. Smartlook

I think this is a great platform as long as there is a dedicated team which is going to spend reviewing the data and also taking out insights from it, making it beneficial. It was well suited for me when working with a client that had a very large amount of traffic, with a large range of complex products on offer. This tool allowed us to be able to do more with the data and segmenting it more which ultimately drove our relationship forward, but also the results that we saw

Smartlook is best for screen recordings. Especially when you are running MVPs. However, its pricing is very high. If your daily visitors are too much then either you will have to lose many of your recordings or you will have to pay too much money.

Incentivized

• It is an excellent cloud analytics platform that is easy to install and configure and easy to deploy and use, allowing us to measure web traffic and other tools.
• It is an entirely online tool; it does not take up hard disk space like other desktop tools.
• Since this tool is draggable, Google is constantly adding more features.
• Even beginners who do not have a custom dashboard can get information. If there is a problem somewhere on the site that needs to be investigated, Google Analytics 360 will notify you.

Incentivized

• Funnels are both easy to configure yet comprehensive enough to detect complicated customer journeys.
• Real-time recording provides exceptional insights to our design & engineering teams.
• Session recording is surprisingly lightweight and seems to cause no substantial performance degradation for our customers.

Incentivized

• As far as I can tell, this is the ultimate large scale analytics platform. It does so much and can be a very powerful tool. Maybe it's overwhelming for newbies, but that's kinda what the pro Google consultations are for.
• Although I've never been personally responsible for paying the GA 360 bills, I know it's very pricey ($150K/year last I checked). If your business is managing a lot of high-traffic sites, and maybe you resell other Google services, then it's probably worth it for the dashboard and integration. So... it's expensive, and by definition, not for everyone.

Incentivized

• Events -- but I think this is something that we could improve ourselves in our system.
• Create some suggestions for funnels and heatmaps.
• Give general insights for a certain period of time, e.g. from Oct. 7th to 12th, 75 users left the checkout step and 60% of them left due to a payment issue. IDK just bringing some ideas!
• Send an e-mail with main insights.

Incentivized

I believe that once Google Analytics Premium releases some additional eCommerce capabilities, it will be the best tool on the market for multi-site customers. Google does an amazing job of fully vetting out new features and functionality before releasing them publicly, so I have found very few issues with the functionality and usability of the tool. Some of the other big players in the industry are too quick to release new features, and they are often riddled with bugs and defects. I know that when I set something up with Google Analytics Premium, I'm getting a reliable, strong product that will deliver what it promises.

As my ratings show, I have been absolutely delighted with Smartlook in terms of usability, cost, support, and its benefit to our organization. I have given it such high ratings because I think it has really benefitted our organization and I think it could do the same for other companies too.

Incentivized

Google Analytics Premium has a very easy to use and intuitive User Interface. It's easy to find anything you are looking for and apply different segments to reports on the fly. This is very important especially if you are doing report comparisons. It's also an aesthetically pleasing design, making the general experience pleasant.

Smartlook is very intuitive and simple for an average programmer (I don't know if it will be as simple for a normal user). We have never had to resort to looking for information on the web or ask for help for something we didn't understand or didn't work as expected.

Incentivized

• Everyday support is primarily through chat and email with the centralized, general team. Its as you would envision with an anonymous individual attempting to figure from "page one." Often responses are later in the day or next day.
• At first signing, one account person is assigned along with an initial individual to assist in onboarding. There's an interview of the goals with GA360, but the provided deliverable document is limited in the review of one site. Also, after delivery of the onboarding document, you are left with an account individual who is looking for expanded vertical integration with other Google products.

Incentivized

I am always very happy when a company offers the option to use online chat, as I do not like to call customer support and writing an email is just too slow and cumbersome. I did not even expect a reply right away, yet it took the customer support team less than a minute to respond to my problem.

Incentivized

There is a ton of information online about Google Analytics, but Google Analytics Premium users will have dedicated support and training from Google or an Authorized Reseller.

If you already have the basic version of GA installed, "getting" GA Premium happens immediately through a virtual flipping of the switch - no need to re-implement. You'll want to expand your use of custom dimensions and metrics (you get 10x the amount with Premium). Ideally, you'll be using a tag management solution to talk with GA Premium, in concert with implementing a dataLayer (to note, Google's Tag Manager platform is covered under the same GA Premium SLA, and it's free). There are some welcomed "configurations" with GA Premium, such as integrating with DoubleClick products, activating data driven attribution models, and building roll-up executive reports - but all of these are easy point and click solutions. In comparison with any other enterprise analytics solution, implementing GA and GA Premium is traditionally easier and more flexible. And if you have any trouble or need an extra set of hands for implementation, GA Certified Partners like LunaMetrics can help

Since our data is on Bigquery it is very easy for us to connect our database to this platform which is very challenging for us to connect the data integration part to other platforms so this is the primary reason for us to choose this platform. The second reason to choose this is that this platform will solve our problems of multiple departments of product, marketing, business, and analytics rather than choosing separate platforms for different departments

Like I mentioned, Smartlook is younger than FullStory and it seems like they're trying to improve. The dashboards are lacking. I wish I had more control over what I see there instead of the standard. We use the API to determine customer name and company and I'd like to see some custom dashboards.

Incentivized

• It helps me understand which social media platforms are most successful for me - which I should focus on and which I might want to focus less on.
• I can also see which blog posts people are reading - so I know which topics resonate most. I can write more of those, hopefully gaining more visitors.

Incentivized

• We have increased the conversion rate from the beginning till now with 120%.
• We redesigned our landing pages and decreased the bounce rate by 41%.
• We rethinked and redesigned our menu structure and internal site linking to increase the time users spent on our site based on the data we got from Smartlook analysis.

Incentivized