Comparing 2 statistical packages

Currently running 2, one shows 20% lower visitors

[alika]

We are working on shifting from Webtrends (enterprise software) to HBX after using WebTrends for a couple of years. We have just installed HBX (on demand) and currently testing it, but we are still keeping WebTrends as well until our contract expires early next year. Both are currently running on our site in order to give us a feel of the types of data each one will give us.

However, we are seeing that HBX is reporting 20% lower visitors than WebTrends. I am expecting that the numbers will not be the same for both software, but I am not expecting a 20% discrepancy! Per day, HBX is showing less than 4,000 visitors compared to WebTrends.

I am perplexed about this. Can anybody help me shed light on this? Aside from installation errors and possibly discounting robots, what other reasons are there for the discrepancy?

Thanks

[dlefree]

HBX is most likely discounting worms and bots - it's not uncommon for e-mail spammer bots alone to account for a large portion of site traffic (if you're not filtering out attempted port connections and other worm activity, the amount of "traffic" increases proportionately).

[cgrantski]

Both of these fairly powerful products have a lot of settings and assumptions that will affect these numbers. Look at the filtering, the way of identifying and defining a "visitor", the time frames involved (for visitors, you MUST compare identical time frames). Also check page views and visits to see if there's a similar discrepancy. If all 3 have the same discrepancy, that points to a completely different likely cause than if 2 of them do, or just one.

[alika]

Thanks for the reply. We checked with HBX technical support as to the reasons for the discrepancy, and so far we got the "it's complicated" response. We feel that HBX is far superior than WebTrends particularly in giving marketing data (love the feature where you actually see on a page the number of times the link was clicked), but we're trying to understand why they're saying we're getting fewer visitors compared to WebTrends.

[cgrantski]

(opinion) "it's complicated" is a pretty poor response. It should be their business to know and explain the differences between them and their biggest competitor.

[Adam_T]

Well not sure about which is better, but the usability team at HBX could do with some pressure, the tiered left hand menu is awful to navigate, why they structured the navigation like that I'll never know.

[plumsauce]

Speaking only for myself, it is absolutely necessary that a stats vendor is able to clearly explain the basis of the numbers that they present. Otherwise, they are pretty meaningless.

For example:

X increases by 1 when Y happens, subject to constraint Z and limitation K.

Unfortunately webtrends may already be aware that you are leaving, but HBX ought to be able to explain themselves. It ought to be you who makes the judgement as to whether it is "complicated" or not.