TrustRadius Insights for Webtrends Analytics are summaries of user sentiment data from TrustRadius reviews and, when necessary, third party data sources.
Pros
Flexible Tool: Many users have found Webtrends Analytics to be a flexible tool with multiple methods of data capture. This flexibility allows them to gather and analyze data in various ways, catering to their specific needs and preferences.
Clean Visual Data Display: Reviewers appreciate the clean and to-the-point visual data display provided by Webtrends Analytics. Unlike other tools, it avoids unnecessary variables and default settings, making it easier for users to understand and interpret the data.
Customizability: Users value the ability to customize everything that the end user sees in Webtrends Analytics, including reporting based on customer channel. This level of customization allows them to tailor the analytics platform according to their business requirements, resulting in more meaningful insights and reports.
My company uses WebTrends on premises, and has ever since I started work here. During my tenure we have added Google Analytics to our website, but we continue to use WebTrends as well.
Pros
Custom Reports
Reanalysis of old data
Can analyze raw log files
Cons
Complexity
Cost of ownership
Adding new report parameters requires full reanalysis
Likelihood to Recommend
I am more familiar with WebTrends than with Google Analytics, and I prefer its custom report creation capabilities. We still need to analyze raw log files occasionally, and having WebTrends on premises allows us to do that. With WebTrends, we own our data, and keep it onsite, unlike with Google Analytics.
Google Analytics is capable of showing live site visits, which our end users love. It is also easier for the users to do basic tasks in -- they find the WebTrends interface too confusing. User management is easier in Google Analytics than it is in WebTrends.
Multiple currency handling under the same domain name
Absence of data sampling 50,000 URLs/day or 500,000
visits/month
Acceptable reporting performance speed
Funnel analysis options
Data import and 3rd
party integration (ESP)
Data export capabilities to other BI solutions (EDW)
Visitor segmentation (personalization)
Data ownership (client vs. vendor)
Service Level Agreement (SLA)
Pros
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
Cons
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)
Likelihood to Recommend
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.
We used Webtrends On Premises with SDC and Tag Builder to analyze B2B, B2C and local government websites. Typically it is used by a several departments to determine the effectiveness of their outreach. It provides an alternative to 'free' web analytics tools and other paid hosted WA tools.
Pros
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.
Cons
Requires careful setup and planning during implementation
If using web server logs, you're able to re-analyze historical data - but it takes time and careful planning/execution.
It would be great to have a fully implemented public test profile to send potential clients to see all the product's features
Wish it supported Microsoft HyperV virtualization. Last time I checked, only VMWare was supported for virtualization of on premises installations.
Likelihood to Recommend
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.
Our use case is as an interactive agency. Some of our clients come to us as Webtrends customers, and we provide implementation and/or support as part of our overall web site development and maintenance practice. The Webtrends consumers at our clients' organizations tend to be in the marketing area, as the tool is used for one or more of the following: 1) assess the performance/value of the web site itself, 2) assess the performance of the marketing that brings people to the web site, or 3) for diagnostics, i.e. what parts of the content, navigation, etc seem to be causing site visitor successes or problems. The audience for the first is execs, for the second is marketers, and for the third is site managers and strategists.
Pros
More than some of its competitors, most Webtrends' configurations (reports, dimensions, filters, content groups, measures) can be done in the admin UI, rather than in the tagging and site code. The tag itself is smart - it can sense offsite links, clicks on pdf downloads, form button clicks, and so on, which eliminates a lot of extra coding or tag modification that has to be done with other products.
There are so many levers and buttons in the configuration that nearly anything can be turned into a report, or a report dimension, filter, or measure.
It allows re-analysis of past data as far back as 90 days. Usually, you do this if you have created new custom reports, content groups, change the filters, and so on.
There is a software version, called On Premises. (The SaaS version is called On Demand.)
It has real path analysis ... it does not daisy-chain individual steps as others do. The paths it displays are what happens in actual visits, up to 20 steps long. It has forward and backward paths (one visit can appear several times depending on how many times the node was hit), paths-from-entry (one visit, one path), content group paths as well as page paths. Its one lack (that I care about) is SiteCatalyst's Pathfinder report which allows you to identify wildcard pages in a 3-step hypothetical path.
This isn't going to ring a bell for a lot of people, but it handles list variables much better than its competitors (basically, parameters that hold multiple values such as "choose as many as apply" kinds of variables.
It handles the tabulations of parameters really well. It deals with three kinds of parameters: those in the pages' URL, those placed in the WT.meta's (I don't think any competitors use this approach and it is fantastic for easily keeping URLs clean for SEO purposes), and those collected automatically by the standard tag. When tabulating parameters, its competitors require more up-front work, lots more configuration time, or severe limits on the quantity.
Having recently tried out Google Analytics' new Content Groups feature, I was reminded of how powerful it is in Webtrends. There's really no comparison. Furthermore, the content groups can be configured p in the UI as well as hard-coded into the page. Content Group paths can be up to 20 steps long, and are not daisy-chained.
Cons
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.
Likelihood to Recommend
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!)
This is being used by our eCommerce team, as well as our Analytics team to get a deeper look into our website traffic, performance, and usability. The data received from WebTrends helps us to make critical business decisions that impact revenue.
Pros
Provides accurate traffic data and information
Includes heat maps to see where visitors are going on your website
Cons
I feel WebTrends is a bit outdated, not quite up to par with Omniture or Google Analytics
Likelihood to Recommend
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.
VU
Verified User
Director in Marketing (Online Media company, 51-200 employees)
Webtrends provides a platform that can accept any number of custom variables and can be adapted to fulfill a variety of business needs. Segmentation, purchase funnel, scenarios, dropoff and bounce rate are effective.
Webtrends 10 integrates analytics data with 3rd party data including app stores, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. This provides a compelling case for programs that require insight into these data.
Cons
Webtrends is not great at providing statistical data for analysis. You need to enable Log File Delivery or create an analysis export to perform this. This could theoretically be done with Streams.
Webtrends has difficulty identifying multi-visit users due to the inherent fragility of cookie-based tracking.
Webtrends Analytics does not provide Pathing capabilities for segments, only for the aggregate. However, this can be worked around with Scenario functionality selectively fired by a tag management system.
Segmentation by high-cardinality parameters tends to cause issues with table limits. Even after scrubbing and scrutinizing data, we commonly see up of 10K rows per dimension. Due to this, we use Webtrends Analytics to roll up data into larger segments and export all of our log data into our database for heavy duty number crunching.
