First off, I’m surprised that there hasn’t been more said about the comparisons between Google Analytics and WebTrends. When Google acquired Urchin back in 2005 and suggested they would be giving the tool away for free, I thought WebTrends would last no more then another 2 years. But I’ve been totally wrong. They’ve still been able to ask for thousands of dollars for the privilege of using their software. I thought it was about time that we really compare these two popular tools and the data they report.

Ok, so Google loses on the matrix of features but let’s go into this a bit deeper.

Bot Traffic: Advantage WebTrends. If you absolutely need to know what bots are hitting your site then go with WebTrends because Google just can’t report that data.

Real-Time Analytics: Big Advantage to WebTrends. Real-time reporting requires investing an a substantial amount of server power. Sure Google has that power but they haven’t put it behind Analytics yet. My guess is you’ll see this in the future but right now the win goes to WebTrends. In my opinion, it’s the sales team that needs to know about real-time visitor activity and there are plenty of tools out there that can do a better job then WebTrends at reporting real-time activity.

Hits: For real? Who still uses this as a metrics and why? Slight Advantage to WebTrends.

Tracking Advertising: This can be accomplished in Google but it’s a bit of a hack to get it working. WebTrends is more eligant in it’s approach towards tracking advertising.

Animated Graphs: Advantage Google. I’m a data visualization junkie and I can easily lose hours working in the visualization tool; however for the majority of marketers this is overkill.

So, how does that data compare?

Total New & Returning Visitors

This data is comparing a 1 year time frame by monthly totals.

Referral Traffic Counts

Six months of data from Jan 1st, 2009 and June 30th, 2009

Page Views

Six months of data from Jan 1st, 2009 and June 30th, 2009

Verdict

To each their own. I personally can’t justify WebTrends to our clients. Google’s feature set is 95% of what is available in WebTrends and the few features that stand out don’t justify the hefty price tag. I’d love to chat with someone who feels WebTrends is superior to Google, I just haven’t found that person yet.

We’ve been equally as guilty as other agencies in designing lead generation forms with an American bias. This is not entirely awful if your target customer/prospect resides in the US; but it is annoying for the non-American end user to have to shoehorn their information into an Americanized format. To the defense of the agencies, many of these fields are dictated by the client to match with their existing CRM systems. In my experience these forms get over-engineered by attempting to adapt the “address information” to fit a non-existent international standard.

I’ve seen complex lead generation forms which contextually alter the address fields to comply with each country’s standards. This is fantastic for the user but it doesn’t help to standardize lead information in the client’s CRM system, plus it becomes unnecessarily complex to maintain from a code/versioning perspective. If there was one field in particular that gunks up lead generation, it’s STATE.

I believe it can be eliminated and the complexity of lead generation forms could be reduced.

Take the typical lead form, such as this one:

This form is entirely too long. The number of required fields could turn-away potential conversions. In this form there is one area that is interesting when you look closely. STATE is based on the COUNTRY selection. Conceptually this interesting, but in this particular instance STATE only becomes REQUIRED if the user selected “United States” otherwise the field is optional.

Why not eliminate the STATE field altogether? I’d bet for most B2B type clients the lead gen forms feed into a sales database and the address information never is used for mailing purposes. So why ask for it?. EMAIL is certainly valuable, as is COUNTRY, NAME, POSTAL CODE and COMPANY. Otherwise I’d argue that the rest of the information is optional or could obtained when someone contacts the lead.

Based on that criteria, let’s shorten this form. We can eliminate STATE because ADDRESS and POSTAL CODE should get us enough information to auto-determine STATE. At a minimum POSTAL CODE is enough to geocode the lead unless they are from Ireland or Panama.

This layout may convert more users, but I’d argue that the form still looks intimidating regardless of the optional fields. If the goal is to convert, then we still need to simplify.

Here’s another approach.

For the bulk of situations this gets the information a sales person needs to follow-up on a lead, and increases the likelihood that the user will convert to a new customer.

Given the state of the economy I’m hearing more clients ask about how to take advantage of the Social Web. Translation: [Marketing dollars are drying up and they need to do something on the cheap. This Social Web thing sounds low-cost and easy to do.] The increased media coverage of Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIN are certainly partially to blame for creating the impression that “everyone” is engaged in the Social Web. Personally, I think this is more hype then reality. There are a number of individuals who are developing networks, contributing to blogs and actually using Twitter to it’s fullest. There are however very few companies who’ve managed to pull this off successfully. I believe there are several reasons why.

Lack of Authenticity
Social media, the Social Web or Web 2.0, whatever you want to call it, only works when you are authentic! Let me repeat, it ONLY works when you are authentic. Your efforts will fail the minute you or your company tries to manufacture buzz or censor the message. Frequent users of social media can smell a fake.

I realize this is a serious shift in thinking for most businesses. In America especially, political correctness has been so ingrained in our culture that we often over-sensor our communication and shred any meaningful substance from the message. Anyone can write a glowing press release full of pat-yourself-on-the-back statements and fluff but it takes real balls to write about your failures and your missteps. Be real with your customers and followers. Give them something they can sink their teeth into, don’t dish them up whipped cream when they want steak!

Lack of Identity and Vision
Who are you? Think about this. With an exception to Howard Hughes I’m at a lost for an example of a hermit who’s made a name for themselves. Likewise a corporate identity is grown overtime through interactions and positions on various issues. Companies need to wake up and develop real corporate visions and position statements, then hire employees who buy into and champion that vision.

This is something we are currently struggling with at Imulus. We admire companies like Patagonia, Apple, 37Signals and IDEO. These companies have clear positions and identities because their founders have laid out the basic tenants of the company’s values. In a sense, these companies are creating a movement and asking their employees to be activist. This is why so often you’ll see the term “cultist” tied to Apple fanatics.

Lack of Interaction
A conversation is quickly killed when one of the parties doesn’t shut the hell up. For companies to really benefit from the Social Web they need to interact with followers and customers. Ask questions, read what others are saying and participate. This isn’t a one-way street.

As an example, I wrote a blog post about Quantcast a few months back. Within 2 days of the post, Adam, the CMO of Quantcast left me a comment. That, is a perfect example of how to use the Social Web.

Based on the few examples I’ve looked at, not very!

Site A: Enterprise Class / Fortune 1000 Web Site
This comparison shows Quantcast ESTIMATES in green, versus the ACTUALS in WebTrends. Both measures track “VISITS”. This is important because the default for Quantcast is “PEOPLE”. I still haven’t figured out the difference between the two. The variation between the two sets of data is significant and the traffic pattern seems inverted.

Site B: Regional Business Information Site
This comparison is between Quantcast ACTUALS in green and Google Analytics ACTUALS in orange. Again, we are tracking Google Unique Visitors against Quantcast Visits. Another important note is that when actual data is pulled in Quantcast you’ll see separate tracking for US vs Global. Since Google doesn’t distinguish, we’ll focus on the global on both.


Site C: National Ecommerce Site
In this example Quantcast faired to be a bit more accurate. I compared Quantcast People (ESTIMATED) with Google Absolute Unique Visitors and the results were a bit more accurate.


Trend Overview
These graphs below were interesting to me because of the traffic discrepancy despite both sites utilizing tracking codes. Both of these graphs are pulled from Site B. Google’s Max is 206 VISITORS per day, whereas Quantcast is showing about 330 VISITORS.

Google Analytics

Quantcast Visits

Summary
I think Quantcast is an excellent tool; however you should proceed with caution when using the analytics obtained from both it’s estimates and actuals. It is important to note that both measures are benchmarking Quantcast against WebTrends and Google Analytics; however both of these tools have been used for many years and are fairly trusted. I’m not sure I’m ready to fully trust in Quantcast. But I’m very open to differing opinions on this.

So, I would assume most Account Managers, Project Managers, and anyone else in client services all know about (and occasionally create) call reports. However, I’d be willing to bet that eventually almost all of you have given up on them. I know, from personal experience, that the call/meeting report is thought about and started with good intentions. Inevitably, however, it ends up being one of the first items to slowly fade away. While it appears to be a good idea, it always seems like a waste of time, and the easiest task to drop. You get busy, and bogged down with tasks, and figure “who really reads these things anyway?” Well, as much as it may seem like extra, unnecessary work, I can say it is one of the best tools anyone in client services can use.

For those of you who have never heard of these, it’s basically a summary of a meeting, phone call, or even quick discussion you’ve had with a client. (It doesn’t hurt to do this with internal meetings too.) After every meeting, send a summary and list of action items to your team and your client. Trust me. It’s worth it.

The call report does NOT need to be an extensive document. It just needs to cover the basics. If you have a client who tends to “forget” what you talked about, you may need to be a bit more specific. No matter the level of detail, just do one. Every time.

I can’t tell you how many times there has been a conflict about what we decided, a task unassigned, or a lack of follow up on an urgent request. With the call report, this is practically impossible. I have had times where the client was quite upset with a situation and couldn’t believe we chose to go down a certain path for his design. Based on a meeting we had over two months ago, I vaguely remembered him requesting something along those lines, but I honestly had no idea what we decided. I feared we were in for a huge change (and a significant loss of money). Low and behold…the magical call report. I pulled up the old document that was sent to my client the day after the meeting, and copied the exact statement saying he agreed to the change. Not only did he insist on this change, but he also agreed that it was out of scope. The call report saved us hours of headaches and a bundle of money. This is not just a random example. These types of things happen at least once a week, and the meeting report has saved my team, my company, and myself a lot of problems. So, I beg of you. Take the time. It’s worth it. And who knows? It may even save a life or two.