Being in a data crunching environment - and I have no lack of passion for data crunching, I am disappointed in the customization and time required to work with webtrends. I've worked with Clicktracks (software) in the past, and while I wasn't happy with the performance of the software version (as far as speed), I was extremely happy with the data it gave me - and hope that if I can migrate to the hosted version that I would get the necessary speed.
Visual overlays on the webpages of where visitors go from the start were extremely useful. As were the splitting between the Natural Keywords from Search engines (specifically Google. Yahoo wasn't split for some reason) to the paid search, which we did alot from both.
Now I am working on a clients version of webtrends analytics 8, and I am not getting much of that data. In fact, I am not getting much actionable data beyond the basics. Keywords searched, popular pages, amounts of hits and visitors etc.
I don't have the analysis of where visitors go from one page to the next. I don't really know the conversion rates from pages to the next page. This is a very sad person here. Ohh, and yes, I've spent over 6 hours on the phone with tech support, and the final response has been to either upgrade to the warehouse version, or to hire webtrends specialists to customize the queries. Exactly what the doctor ordered.
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Eh? All levels of WebTrends 8, 7, and 6 come with these built-in reports: next page seen for every page on the site, previous page seen for every page on the site, 5-step paths from entry point (both in terms of page steps and also content group steps if you want), 5-step paths from any individual page, 5-step paths to any individual page. And there's also the page overlay feature, which I don't think is available for every level of the product.
Maybe I'm misunderstand what you are looking for?
Eh? All levels of WebTrends 8, 7, and 6 come with these analyses of where visitors go from one page to the next: next page for all pages on the site, previous page for all pages on the site, first five (or more) steps into the site from entry (in terms of pages or in terms of individual content groups if you wish), next 5-20 page steps (or content group steps) from any specified page or content group, previous 5-20 page steps (or content group steps) to any specified page/content group. Plus WebTrends has browser overlays, though I'm not sure it's available for all levels of the product (standard, marketing, advanced marketing, ecommerce are the level names). Finally, all levels of the product have funnel analysis (they call it "scenario analysis") for defined funnels.
Maybe I'm completely misunderstanding what you want, but if it's path analysis, the variety of WebTrends' path analysis options is possibly better than anything on the market. Possibly you are using a template that does not show these reports. Check the documentation.
The built in reports are convenient. However, I just spent 10 hours or so configuring it. You literally need to be running across 50 different sections to do all of hte configuration. The settings are not very intuitive.
I've used the clicktracks software version, and although it was slow as hell when it came to processing the logs, everything is visual and intuitive. They overlay conversion rates and clickstreams over the website picture - allowing you to click the link and navigate to the next page. They also can visually seperate traffic in reports both by source, as well as allowing you to seperate it by creating color coded tags.
For webtrends, you would have to find that parameter, and create a custom approach.
The difference off the top of my head is the permissions. Webtrends was built as an enterprise solution so that the right person can see the right reports, requiring an extensive permissions settings system. This is not really needed for anything below a 200 person company.
I haven't worked for any company with more than 200 employees, so I don't appreciate the settings in webtrends, and I would rather stick with a more intuitive setup.
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