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WebTrends 9 Spits in Google Analytics’ Face; Steals Its Lunch Money Too!

posted on August 5, 2009


When Google decided to enter the web analytics space, fear spread throughout the industry at the thought of a challenger that offered a pretty comprehensive package–for free, no less!

Well, after the initial trembling of the knees, web analytics companies re-grouped and came out swinging. The latest development comes from WebTrends, which appears to have finished a considerable upgrade to its user interface.

In fact, Douglas Karr–who provides the screenshots below–sums it up nicely:

The new interface with Webtrends 9 is elegant, simple, clean and has exceptional usability. It feels as though you just sat down in a new Mercedes.

Karr has a number of screenshots on his site, but here are a couple that jumped out to me.

RSS Overlays

Want to know how your social media efforts are directly helping your corporate web traffic? A new RSS overlay lets you match your activities with your traffic spikes:

And, how about having someone actually interpret all of those numbers for you? Instead of paying for a web analyst with a PhD, WebTrends will convert the data to something you can actually understand!

Plain English!

Throw in iPhone compatibility and the new WebTrends interface certainly looks like a winner. What do you think? Who’s tried the new interface?


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  • http://www.ignitesocialmedia.com Brian Chappell

    Hmm $30,000 a year or free ;-) I will take free.

    That RSS overlay does look tight though.

  • http://www.shaneeubanks.com Shane Eubanks

    I love the “plain english” feature! That will help tremendously when sending reports to people who don’t necessarily like “stats”. The social trending graph is cool too….we often look at spikes and end up wondering if it was an email campaign, twitter post, etc.

    Overall I love what I see so far…very slick.
    .-= Shane Eubanks´s last blog ..Build a Better Blog in 31 Days =-.

  • http://www.analyticsevolution.com John Lovett

    I’ve seen the new interface and indeed it does offer some innovative functionality. @douglaskarr does it justice. But what’s with the smack down on Google Analytics?

    Even Webtrends concedes in its press release that Google Analytics is good for them and the Web analytics industry as a whole. I’m not defending GA or their technology because frankly they don’t need me to. Each of these technologies is right for some companies…the trick is understanding what your organization needs.

    I’d add that Google’s lunch money is relatively safe…and it’s a free lunch at that.

    My $.02.

    John Lovett,
    Forrester Research
    .-= John Lovett´s last blog ..Webtrends Acquires Widemile =-.

  • http://www.marketingpilgrim.com Andy Beal

    @John – those that read MP, know how much I love GA. In fact, I annoyed a lot of analytics firms when I once said that GA was enough for 90% of all companies. Still, benign headlines don’t make for interesting reading–or get people to comment. ;-)

  • http://www.analyticsevolution.com John Lovett

    Indeed you got my attention! Kudos for sensationalism :)

    I too rocked the boat last year when I wrote that IndexTools has 77% of the premium solution’s functionality and that Google Analytics had 64%. http://www.analyticsevolution.com/2008/07/its-not-tools-its-craftsman. html. Those stats make free look rather compelling.

    Cheers,
    John
    .-= John Lovett´s last blog ..Webtrends Acquires Widemile =-.

  • http://netibz.com Cory Huff

    I’m with John – Google’s (free) lunch money is relatively safe. Webtrends is awesome though. I live in Portland and they have done a tremendous job in community outreach and industry facilitation.

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  • Bruno M

    I can only imagine that this title was worded this way it was to generate traffic b/c the idea is laughable.

  • steve branko

    I have had access to wedtrends 9 and the interface on the face of it looks pretty but they have lost huge swathes of granularity and analysis capabilities and they appear to be becoming a GA clone with a few bells and whistles that i have to say were not very easy to use. I also found the version with a lot of bugs and having worked with 20 providers over the years there are plenty of better heavyweight products for serious business users including site catalyst, coremetrics and Intellitracker R6.

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