The web and mobile technology have profoundly changed the way organizations do business. The ability to collect more and more granular data about consumers, including existing customers, changes the way businesses market, advertise and sell products and services.
In some respects, web and mobile analytics has made it easier to establish closer relationships. But the technology is a double-edged sword; it’s critical to understand the data and put it to use effectively. Organizations that get the equation right can boost brand identity and bottom-line results.
Like other data science tools, web and mobile analytics have advanced considerably during the last few years. Tools have become far more sophisticated, offering insights that wouldn’t have been imaginable a decade ago. This includes psychological and behavioral analytics, deeper insights into customer interactions (CX), a better understanding of traffic and consumption patterns and customer session reviews—as well as scoring systems that help businesses understand how and where to devote resources. When this data is put into play, businesses can drive greater loyalty and bottom-line results.
Web and mobile analytics are now critical tools. The resulting reports, heat maps, anomaly detection and form analytics offer deep insights that weren’t available in the past. Used effectively—and in conjunction with A/B testing, customer sentiment analysis and various other types of analytics and reporting—they can even help businesses develop new products, update existing products, and develop more comprehensive customer journey mapping strategies.
For many organizations, mobile and web analytics are the closest touchpoint with customers. Consequently, eWEEL has surveyed the marketplace and assembled 10 of the top web and mobile analytics providers. We’ve combed company web sites as well as Gartner Peer Insights, the Forrester Wave, G2 Crowd, Capterra and other sources.
Adobe
Headquarters: San Jose, Calif.
Phone: 877-722-7088
Analytics Solutions:
Adobe Web Analytics
Adobe Marketing Analytics
Adobe Predictive Analytics
Adobe has established itself as a leader in web analytics by delivering powerful tools for managing clickstream data and other consumer data. Adobe Web Analytics reaches beyond basic reporting functions by mixing and morphing data from various sources. A drag-and-drop interface allows users to customize analytics using data tables, visualizations, and various components—including channels, dimensions, metrics, segments and time granularities. Flow analysis features deliver insights into customer behavior—including how and where they navigated through a site. Advance segmentation uses statistical analysis to understand segments and dimensions in broader and deeper ways. Adobe Marketing Analytics taps data from the Web, CRM, mobile and more to tune marketing focus. Adobe Predictive Analytics uses mobile and web data, along with other sources, to aid marketers and data analysts in developing materials and approaches. Adobe was cited as a “Leader” in The Forrester Wave: Web Analytics 2017. Users describe the products as “powerful” and “robust” but say that they are sometimes not as intuitive to use as they would like.
Clicktale
Headquarters: Ramat Gan, Israel
Phone: 800-807-2117
Analytics Solutions:
Experience Analytics for Web & Mobile
Experience Analytics for Apps
Clicktale has adopted a cloud-based approach to address enterprise web and mobile data analytics requirements. Clicktale Experience Cloud aims to ratchet up CX insights using visualizations, psychological analytics and integrations with top third-party providers, including Adobe, Google, Mixpanel and Heap. This helps cull data from landing pages, forms, shopping carts and more. The real-time framework delivers heat maps, session replays, conversion analytics and advanced data insights that detect positive and negative visitor mindsets, loyalty levels, form friction, conversion vs. struggle paths, lead quality and cues signaling deception. The end goal is a 360-degree customer view with the ability to drill down into all the data. Experience Analytics for Apps offers session replays along with crash trends and filters for understand visitors, operating systems and more. Users report that the vendor’s products are easy to implement and that it provides excellent data and visualizations. There are a few complaints about inconsistencies, sluggish performance and bugs.
Headquarters: Mountain View, Calif.
Phone: 650-253-0000
Analytics Solution: Google Marketing Platform
Google is an undisputed heavyweight in the world of web and mobile analytics. The company’s marketing platform ties together numerous elements that create a holistic data analysis platform. Google Analytics delivers detailed data about sites, apps and content. The solution includes dashboards and powerful reporting features that encompass factors such as audience, advertising, acquisitions, behavior, conversions and flow. The framework features data analysis and visualizations that tap data access, funnel analysis, segmentation, and more. It also incorporates machine learning capabilities that reach deeper into data sets. Not surprisingly, the analytics capabilities are tied into other Google offerings (as well as third-party products), including Google Ads, AdSense, AdMob and Ad Manager. The platform also supports data exports to Google BigQuery. As a result, users can glean audience data and tap into the power of predictive analysis, among other things. Users overwhelmingly describe the free service as powerful and flexible. However, some find it difficult to use effectively and there are complaints about the lack of support for event-driven analytics.
IBM
Headquarters: Armonk, NY
Phone: 877-426-3774
Analytics Solutions:
Watson Customer Experience Analytics
Watson Marketing Insights
IBM’s web and mobile data analytics products focus on an out-of-the-box experience. They are more focused and directed than the company’s more general legacy data science tools, such as SPSS Modeler. These analytics tools help organizations better understand behavioral patterns, engagement and lifetime value. Watson Marketing Insights also delivers recommendations about target audiences and engagement methods. The latter solution focuses on faster and smarter marketing and CX by examining channels and touchpoints. IBM offers pre-built integration with Google, Adobe and others. Forrester rated IBM a “leader” in The Forrester Wave: Customer Analytics Solutions, Q2 2018. Users view the IBM tools favorably. They praise the interface and dashboard options. However, there are complaints from users about sometimes slow performance and the lack of desired features.
InnoCraft
Headquarters: Wellington, New Zealand
e-Mail: [email protected]
Analytics Solution: Matomo Web & Mobile Analytics Cloud
InnoCraft uses the widely popular open source Matomo (formerly Piwik) data analytics tool to deliver a wide array of web and mobile data analytics functions. This includes analytics for goals, events, channels, campaigns, dimensions, geolocation and more. The product, which is available on-premises and in the cloud, also delivers analytics tools related to e-commerce, video and audio, forms, users, heat maps, session recording, segmentation, search engine keywords and A/B testing. Matomo Analytics, which claims to be used at more than 1.4 million websites, offers robust reporting tools and additional roll-up reporting. The InnoCraft platform supports import and export of data, customizable dashboards, content tracking and tie in with goals and key performance indicators (KPIs). Users praise the solution for the broad and deep array of features and excellent functionality. They also cite strong API and extension support. However, a few complaints focus on reporting flexibility and performance under heavy-traffic conditions.
Mixpanel
Headquarters: San Francisco, Calif.
Phone: 888-510-2370
Analytics Solution: Mixpanel
Mixpanel takes aim at making data insights available quickly and efficiently. The vendor offers a platform that combines online and offline data to address crucial areas such as engagement, retention, funnels, demographics, behavioral analysis and more. It tackles an array of tasks, including A/B testing, automated analysis, reporting and machine learning. Mixpanel offers enterprise and SaaS solutions as well as specialized products designed for different vertical industries, including financial services, consumer tech, media and entertainment, retail and e-commerce, telecommunications and marketing. Users say that platform delivers deep insights, integrates well with a wide range of data sources, and that it deftly handles complex analysis tasks. However, some users complain that the produce is difficult to learn, reporting could be more visual and robust, and that the software lacks APIs for data export in certain formats, such as JavaScript.
SessionCam
Headquarters: Norwich, UK
Phone: 888-528-0896
Analytics Solution: SessionCam
The vendor’s analytics suite pulls data from online interactions and uses it to deliver deep insights into behavior and actions. SessionCam offers a variety of features, including session replays, heat maps, conversion funnels, form analytics, customer journey mapping, error detection, struggle detection and anomaly detection. The platform integrates with numerous other data science and analytics tools to perform tag management, web analytics, A/B testing and “voice of the customer” insights. The list includes top software packages such as Adobe Analytics, Google Analytics, Webtrends, Qubit and Monetate. SessionCam offers a visual interface that displays sessions and lets groups view user behavior graphically. The recordings include mouse movements, clicks, form input, scrolling and mobile gestures using an exact version of the page design and content the user viewed. Users give the suite high ratings for features that differentiate it from competitors. A few users report that the interface could use improvement.
Siteimprove
Headquarters: Copenhagen, Denmark
Phone: 855-748-3467
Analytics Solution: Siteimprove
The vendor offers a SaaS solution designed to improve website and mobile apps through analytics. The all-in-one platform, which addresses Digital Presence Optimization (DPO), focuses on site accessibility, search engine optimization (SEO), content quality, brand compliance, data security and a number of other factors. It provides fully automated website checks and offers insights through dashboards that display performance metrics, industry benchmarks and other criteria. In addition, the platform flags errors and inconsistencies across web pages and apps. It includes plug-and-play integration with a variety of external software and systems, including content management providers. A Digital Certainty Index (DCI) examines more than 200 checkpoints to provide an analysis of how well a site meets quality standards, and how discoverable it is by search engines. Siteimprove also offers policy management tools that flag violations for branding, style, legal or regulatory policies. And it includes automated reporting and data exports. Users give the company high marks for its user interface and easy navigation. Some complain about false positives and find the reporting function confusing, however.
Webtrends
Headquarters: Portland, Ore.
Phone: 503-227-4600
Analytics Solutions:
Webtrends Optimize
Webtrends Analytics
Webtrends offers a broad suite of analytics tools designed to optimize digital marketing and sales. Webtrends Optimize addresses A/B testing, multivariate testing, form optimization, site search optimization, onsite surveys, urgency messaging and various personalization tasks. Webtrends Analytics for SharePoint delivers customizable dashboards, standardized and customizable reporting, and data export tools that tap REST API to extract aggregate report data, and support XML, JASON, Excel and other widely used formats. The platform incorporates adoption measurement tools—including new and returning user metrics—along with content activity metrics and search effectiveness data. Some users describe Webtrends as a “incredible tool” and “easy to understand” but others say that certain functions, such as tagging, can require a good deal of effort. Users also say that reporting functions could be streamlined and improved.
Woopra
Headquarters: San Francisco, Calif.
Phone: 415-618-0622
Analytics Solution: Woopra Analytics
Woopra specializes in real-time end-to-end customer analytics. It provides tools for visualization and optimization throughout the customer journey. This includes journey analytics reports, non-linear journey analysis, journey campaign attribution, and segmentation (including unmatched segmentation) capabilities. In addition, Woopra offers reporting for trends, cohorts, behavioral segmentation and retention. The vendor offers products and automation tools for software-as-a-service (SaaS), mobile, e-commerce and specific verticals such as media, travel, finance and automotive. The platform uses a NoSQL approach to simplify processes. User reviews trend highly positive toward the company—many like the interface and powerful capabilities that the analytics platform delivers—yet some say it can be difficult to drill down through data and the documentation could be better.
Solutions at a Glance
