Adobe Analytics (SiteCatalyst)

 Adobe Analytics (SiteCatalyst) Overview

Adobe Analytics helps users create a holistic view of their business by turning customer interactions into actionable insights. By creating intuitive and interactive dashboards and reports, users can sift, sort, and share real-time information to provide insights that uncover problems and opportunities. The program is one of the industry leading solutions and delivers analytics and reporting capability to enable data-driven decision making. It provides insight critical to optimizing marketing efforts such as delivering personalized experiences, driving better ad spending, or monetizing content with the highest ad rates possible (“Adobe analytics”)

Adobe Analytics helps deepen customer understanding with real-time digital analytic measuring and reporting. This allows companies to quickly identify the most profitable paths through digital assets, determine where visitors are navigating away, and identify critical success metrics for online marketing campaigns. The software allows companies to gain deeper insight into visitor segmentation. Adobe delivers a comprehensive, multidimensional view of digital visitors that enable marketers to make accurate, timely, and insightful decisions and improve the performance of businesses. Companies are also able to measure, analyze, and optimize integrated data from all online and offline initiatives across multiple marketing channels in one place (“Adobe analytics”).

Enhanced decision making is another benefit to Adobe Analytics. The software allows users to explore online data in ways that are most relevant to business needs. Users are able to collect, automatically process, and perform custom analyses and visualizations of Adobe Analytics data in Microsoft Excel.  The software also accurately identifies mobile visitors and device capabilities to deliver the right experience to each user. It also tracks and measures owned social media to understand the impact and effectiveness of social media campaigns. Adobe Analytics allows users to gain critical customer insight with conversion reports showing detailed information on purchasing metrics, customer loyalty campaigns, visitor profiles, etc. Users are also able to realize shortened sale cycles with timely customer insight via predictive models and engagement scoring (“Adobe analytics”).

Unique Features

Adobe Analytics offers many unique features to users. Conversion improvement allows users to gain critical insight with conversion reports that show detailed information on purchasing metrics, customer loyalty, campaigns, visitor profiles, etc. Marketing attribution lets users easily compare marketing channels via multiple allocation models to make faster investment decisions that optimize digital marketing. Another feature is cross-device visitor identification which connects visitors across devices to enable a better visitor level view of customers. The software also offers Facebook analytics which allows users to measure all key areas of Facebook. Users are able to measure 100 percent of apps, fan pages, ads, and Facebook Connect. Also through a special partnership between Adobe and Facebook, users have access to aggregate demographic information from Facebook. Adobe Analytics also provides 20 plus out of the box mobile reports that can be emailed to marketers in a mobile friendly format. Lastly users are able to see how video impacts marketing channels and content consumption by integrating the data with all site performance metrics to see the impact of video across all marketing channels (“Adobe analytics”).

Tracking Features

Here is a comprehensive list of the tracking features of Adobe Analytics:

·         Search

·         Real-time

·         Email Campaign

·         Social Media

·         Mobile OS

·         Multi-domain Tracking

·         Event Tracking

·         E-commerce

·         User-defined Variables

·         Cost-per-click (Import)

·         Unique Visitors

·         Forms and Fields

·         Custom Bounce Rates

Analyzing Features

Here is a comprehensive list of the analyzing features of Adobe Analytics:

·         Funnel Visualization

·         Multi-touch Conversion

·         Visitor Loyalty

·         On-page Analysis

·         Visitor Path

·         Segmentation (retrospective)

·         Filters

·         Trends

·         Predictive

·         Internal Search

·         Pivot Tables

·         Secondary Dimensions

·         Statistical Relevance

·         Alerts and Flagging

·         Custom Reports

·         Multi-user Dashboards

·         Customizable Dashboards

Export Features

Here is a comprehensive list of the export features of Adobe Analytics:

·         PDF and Email

·         Excel

·         CSV, XML

·         Raw Data

·         API

·         Apps on Mobile Equipment

·         Integration with other Software

User Reviews

Adobe Analytics scored four out of five stars overall by most users polled on Aboutanalytics.com. A consensus among reviewers is that the software offers loads of data which online marketers can spend a lot of time on, but a minor problem is that it is hard to create the right kind of overview in the huge range of available data. Other reviewers said there is sufficient support information that is available and the search function is easy-to-use and provides users with the right kind of answers. Users also said that the dashboard has a unique PDF integration with a nice editor to create reports. Some users found Adobe Analytics hard to use without a lot of analytical skills and experience. They got lost in the data and experienced analysts seemed to enjoy the interface more. Most users found ease in implementation with standard tagging easy to set up. This however became more complicated with custom tags for tracking conversions and many users needed help if they did not have the technical resources available (“Adobe analytics”).

Comparison to Google Analytics

Using Google Analytics and Adobe Analytics requires different mindsets and skills. Google Analytics is seen as a chic, suave, easy-to-use product, while Adobe Analytics is the more bulky, yet powerful product. One is easy on the eyes and the other requires a little more time to fall in love with its capabilities (What’s the difference,” 2013).

Google Analytics is a free tool that can be easily implemented into a website. Obtaining data is as easy as pasting the HTML code into the website. Google permits the flexibility to do custom implementation that allows users to get the most of the tool. Custom implementation allows for custom variables, cross and sub-domain tracking, virtual pageviews, and event tracking. Google Analytics offers up to five custom variables for free and limits events to 500 per session. Newer features include custom dimensions and metrics as well as cost uploads for various paid campaigns (What’s the difference,” 2013).

On the other hand Adobe Analytics requires cost (starting at $5,000/month) and more in-depth development work. The implementation is always customized and differs depending on specific needs, metrics, and goals. The upfront work and investment for Adobe Analytics is greater than Google Analytics. However if the implementation is done properly, the information gathered will be more tailored to specific metric needs. In addition to tracking web actions the Adobe suite offers various options for data integration across a company’s data infrastructure (What’s the difference,” 2013).

Adobe Analytics has the advantage of custom implementation, which provides the option for the creation of custom traffic, event, and conversion variables. These variables are set in advance to give specific information about visitors rather than looking at all visitors in aggregate. Users can see the visitors who clicked through on a campaign versus the visitors who purchased a product. Adobe Analytics allows up to 75 traffic variables, 100 event variables, and 75 conversion variables. The software also allows variables to be set to expire after a specified period of time and can also be stacked on top of each other, so users can see the sequence of events taking place (What’s the difference,” 2013).

Google Analytics also has the ability to set custom variables but only allows up to 5 custom variables with their free version. Like Adobe Analytics, these custom variables can be set to expire after different measurements such as a page views, completion of an event, or at the visit level. Google is moving to be more flexible in terms of custom variables and their new product Universal Analytics will allow for 20 custom dimensions and custom metrics. These will be easier to implement than Google Analytics’ current version of custom variables and will be more similar to the variables seen in Adobe Analytics (What’s the difference,” 2013).

Adobe Analytics allows for distinctive reporting suited of various data sets. For example if a company has several sub-sites, each sub-site can have their own suite for data, which can then be rolled up into one large suite. This allows metrics to be broken down for each sub-suite. Report suites allow users to track different paths a visitor might take between sub-sites. These reports also allow the creation of one dashboard that can be applied with different report suites (What’s the difference,” 2013).

Instead of reporting suites, Google Analytics allows for the creation of different data profiles. These profiles serve as versions of data with permanent filters applied. Google Analytics also allows users to look at data in sections with segmentation. Users can apply up to four segments and make comparisons across each of these segments. Adobe Analytics does not allow for the comparison of segments. In order for a comparison to occur in Adobe Analytics, the user must export the data from different segments and compare it outside of the program (What’s the difference,” 2013).

Conclusion

Both analytics software bring unique features to the table. Users have to balance the trade-off between ease-of-use and complexity to determine which tool which best for their needs. There are times when Google Analytics is best to use because information is gathered quickly and easy. However, in-depth answers might require Adobe Analytics. These tools in conjunction can give users the greatest value and determine optimal business strategies (What’s the difference,” 2013).

References:

Adobe analytics (site catalyst). (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.aboutanalytics.com/adobe/adobe-analytics-site-catalyst

What's the difference? comparing google analytics and adobe site catalyst. (2013). Retrieved from http://www.paceco.com/google-analytics-adobe-sitecatalyst-comparison/