Blizzard ROI Tracker vs. Google Analytics

Blizzard Associate | 20 August 2007 |

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The following is a list of what the Blizzard ROI Tracker provides that Google Analytics does not. This covers both the product itself as well as support.

The Products

It is important to understand the differences between the two products and this can be easily explained in the following sentence:

Google Analytics is a reporting system providing you a fixed set of reports allowing you to view visitor information regarding your web property. Blizzard ROI Tracker is an analysis based system providing you with the necessary features to both report and analyze data.

Google Analytics is primarily focused on an SME client base. This is a beginning point for small web properties to get a basic idea of how their web property is performing. GA is ideal for this, but the difficulty arises when the user starts to ask questions. More often than not, this is when those users realize the difference between reporting and analysis and opt to move their analytics requirements over to a paid provider to help them answer these questions.

So what are the key features and USP’s of Blizzard ROI Tracker in comparison to Google Analytics?

Blizzard ROI Tracker is an on-demand solution delivering both reporting and data collection in real-time. GA is mainly six to eight hours behind, so you never actually get to see what is happening on your website in real time. This is particularly important when you implement, update, or modify specific pages on your website and wish to see whether the tagging is performing as it should, the data is being collected as expected etc. Blizzard ROI Tracker allows you to deploy and test with instant results. Imagine having to wait six hours to view each change you make, and if it isn’t right you have to wait another six hours to see the next change … and so on.
Blizzard ROI Tracker is a highly scalable solution designed to serve large volume clients. Reports can be run in real time on a years worth of data in seconds. GA was not designed to serve large volume clients, so report generation (on a years worth of data) on big websites can take minutes.
Blizzard ROI Tracker provides its entire Enterprise client base with the option of an API account. This means that the client may log in through an XML/SOAP interface and pull all of their data through the API and into other systems as they wish. GA does not provide such a service.
Blizzard ROI Tracker is far easier to install on a web property than GA. Blizzard ROI Tracker tracks, for example, all downloads from a web property automatically. In GA the technical team must tag every download URL so that it can be recognized as a download.
Blizzard ROI Tracker offers Custom Field tracking, which GA cannot provide. This means a user can capture site-specific data and pull this into the reporting system. For example, tracking internal search (phrases, results, number of results) or age, sex, and location of users. This data can then be cross referenced with PPC campaigns, merchandising etc. The possibilities are almost limitless.
Blizzard ROI Tracker provides, as standard, 10 actions (GA call these goals) on each Enterprise account. GA only provides four, which for most Enterprise clients is nowhere near enough. Blizzard ROI Tracker can also increase this action allocation upon request, free of charge.
Blizzard ROI Tracker provides an Advanced Custom reporting Wizard. This means that while there are the standard reports in the system, the user may also generate hundreds of thousands of custom reports, based on the data they want to see. Users may customize existing reports or generate reports from scratch. The wizard is also extremely user friendly and is in a Pivot Table Drag ‘n’ Drop format. GA doesn’t provide this feature.
Blizzard ROI Tracker provides Advanced Segmentation. This means a user can build their own segments and apply these to the reports. One segment may contain up to five complex requirements and can be saved for later use and applied to reports at the click of a button. This is not the same as GA, who provide filters (though they call them segments).
Blizzard ROI Tracker provides customizable executive dashboards with customizable KPIs (Key Performance Indicator). This means that the user has the option to create dashboards for different business units within the company. More importantly, it allows users to define KPIs and goals for their web property allowing them to easily analyze and measure the performance of their web property easily. User rights management also aids in allowing certain users to only view specific dashboards. GA dashboards are simply summary reports existing in the system and do not allow users to define their goals and KPIs.

Blizzard ROI Tracker New Version release Q3 2007
Blizzard ROI Tracker (as with most other vendors) does one major release each year. This year’s release is as advanced as our others and continues to place a significant divide between Blizzard ROI Tracker and GA.

Lifetime visitor-level metrics – Blizzard ROI Tracker Web Analytics’ visit-based approach will be extended by adding life-time visitor segmentation, thus providing analysts and marketers more accurate and insightful behavioral analysis of customers. This allows true customer life cycle analysis that is especially useful for business models that are based on building long lasting customer retention and/or communities rather than instant conversions.
External data source framework – Single, integrated, and extensible customer view of KPIs across on-line and off-line channels. Our External data source framework integrates both data outside of your website, as, for example, e-mail statistics as well as non-typical web-related data, such as information from registered member databases, call centers, logistics, sales, and marketing systems. This solution gives you a complete view of your customers and lead interactions.
Interactive visualization – Most standard web analytics tools are able to generate hundreds of charts, diagrams, and tables. These techniques usually do not allow for visualization of all the available data and show simple numbers, which are very effective but not visually stimulating and can be easily misread. To help you to interpret the most complex and detailed reports, IndexTools introduces Interactive visualization (based in a Flash environment). This new generation of visual user interface allows you unlimited flexibility to visualize the most critical metrics of your business (which may have previously been hidden).
Custom metrics – Blizzard Tracker Edition is a highly customizable web analytics system. With it, you can build custom reports, using the metrics which are most relevant to your business.

Other Important Comparisons
Moving away from feature comparisons and more into product restrictions, Google Analytics has a number of significant factors that limit its integration with other competing search engines. As an independent analytics provider, Blizzard ROI Tracker doesn’t suffer from these limitations.

Google Analytics will never be granted access to Yahoo!, MSN, Miva, etc. to be able to provide multi-engine ROI tracking. Blizzard ROI Tracker has API access to all the major search engines and can, as such, pull data directly from search engines and display this data alongside the corresponding campaigns in the display. GA is limited to Adwords accounts.
Blizzard ROI Tracker is also preparing for the release of it’s Bid Management tool (early September 2007). For the same reasons as mentioned above, Blizzard ROI Tracker can provide Bid Management for all of the major search engines. Bid Management with Google Analytics can only be provided for Adwords.
Blizzard ROI Tracker provides live support with a dedicated team of specialists you can call with any inquiries you may have. We have user manuals and installation manuals like Google but provide all technical support (free of charge).
As Google grows, there are many concerns that “giving” Google access to analytics data from your web property is not perhaps the best business practice. This cause for concern comes from smaller web properties out there, so for Enterprise Level customers at the top of their market sector this should, in all fairness, be of even greater concern. A rather cynical approach on this has been “You don’t get anything for free, so the question is; what is Google getting from this?”
Flexibility and feature requests at Blizzard ROI Tracker are the norm. Blizzard Tracker products have been developed over the years with input from both our direct clients and partners alike. If there is a feature a user would like or a tweak that could be made in the system to make a user’s life easier, Blizzard Tracker is constantly making small updates to the system to service requests such as these.

In Conclusion

While a feature comparison is often the way decision makers in a company tend to go, in the analytics industry a certain amount of foresight is required.

Google Analytics, without question, is a great entry level tool for small web property owners trying to get a basic overview of their web property. However, it falls short in being a true analysis product and focuses, more significantly, on reporting. As a large web property owner with significant online investment, you need to actively and effectively generate ROI. You therefore need to employ a tool that can not only report but can also help you analyze. The Blizzard ROI Tracker provides an advanced feature set easily allowing you to do both.

This article written in collaboration with Charlie Holbech.