Adobe Analytics Vs. Google Analytics - A Feature-wise Comparison

Analytics Overview

If something came out of the events of the last 3-4 years, then it is definitely the power of digital transformation. The majority of businesses began moving to digital platforms. Whether you have an e-shop or an informative website, you need to analyze your digital performance to understand your customers and stay on top of their desires. But making data-driven decisions is difficult without the right analytics tool to help you out.

Data analytics software offers an endless supply of information and insights into your campaigns. This info can be utilized to capture more visitors and maximize your marketing ROI.

Website analytics provide insights you can use to better understand user behavior on your website. Analytics platforms do that by measuring activities like how many users visit, how long they stay, how many pages they visit, which pages they visit, and how they arrive at your site. Armed with this knowledge, you can optimize your site to increase key conversions that help you meet your business goals.

There are numerous data analytics tools – two of the most popular ones being Google Analytics and Adobe web Analytics.

Introduction to Adobe Analytics

Insights matter. Actions matter more. Get both.

It might be a campaign that’s underperforming. Or you need to know which content will inspire your customers. Maybe you just want time to look for the insights that really matter—the ones only you can find. Whatever the challenge—from basic web tracking to creating a culture of insight where data is infused into every action on every team—Adobe Analytics can help.

Using AI, machine learning, and other advanced technology, you go beyond visits, page views, and bounce rates to find customer insights that really drive the bottom line. Companies spend a lot on content and campaigns. So it’s crucial that companies invest in the journeys that really matter. Attribution helps you understand the impact of every touch from every customer through paid, owned, and earned channels. With both rules-based and algorithmic attribution models, Adobe Analytics uses machine learning and advanced statistics so you can make the right investment every time. Too often, companies use their data only to reveal insights about the past. With the predictive capabilities of Adobe Analytics, you can use your data better. Predictive tools powered by machine learning and AI are a major part.

Adobe Analytics lets you mix, match, and analyze data from any digital point in the customer journey. With in-depth analysis, versatile reporting, and predictive intelligence, you get the insightful foundation you need to build better customer experiences.

Adobe Analytics is a component of the Adobe Experience Cloud. This enterprise-level suite comprises products that enable you to apply detailed segmentation and real-time analytics to your site. It also includes the ability to track users across a variety of devices, so you can analyze user journeys at a deeper level.

Introduction to Google Analytics

Google Analytics is a web-based tool offered by Google that helps website owners track and analyze user behavior on their websites. It provides detailed information about website traffic, including the number of visitors, their geographic location, the pages they visit, and the amount of time they spend on the site. This information can be used to make informed decisions about website design, content, and marketing strategies.

One of the main benefits of Google Analytics is that it provides detailed insights into user behavior, including what pages are most popular, how visitors navigate the site, and which search terms they use to find the site. This information can help website owners understand what is working well on their site and what needs to be improved.
Google Analytics also allows website owners to track conversion rates, which is the percentage of visitors who take a desired action, such as making a purchase or filling out a contact form. This information can be used to optimize the website to increase conversion rates and improve the overall user experience.
Another benefit of Google Analytics is that it integrates with other Google products, such as AdWords and Google Tag Manager, making it easier to track the effectiveness of online advertising campaigns. This can help website owners allocate their marketing budget more effectively and make informed decisions about where to invest their resources.

Overall, Google Analytics is a valuable tool for SMBs (Small and medium-sized businesses) and digital marketers who want to track user behavior, improve eCommerce performance, and make data-driven decisions about their online marketing efforts.

Which One to Pick - Adobe Analytics or Google Analytics?

The tool selection should depend on the following factors:

What level of insights are you looking for and how will these insights enable you to make the right business decisions
The other aspect to look into is how analytics tools can integrate with other marketing tools you use in your organization
What features and functionality are provided in the analytics tool, and how useful are they for your organization
The tool should allow you to customize reports and dashboards to meet your specific needs
The tool should provide clear and actionable data visualizations that make it easy to understand key metrics and trends
The tool should provide advanced analytics features, such as customer segmentation, conversion rate optimization, and funnel analysis, to help you make the most of your data
The tool should offer excellent customer support, including online resources, documentation, and a dedicated support team
The tool should integrate with other tools you use, such as email marketing platforms, social media platforms, and advertising platforms

By keeping these factors in mind, you can ensure that you select an eCommerce analytics tool that meets your needs and helps you achieve your business goals.

A Detailed Comparison between Adobe Analytics & Google Analytics

Quick Summary

Web Reporting is not Web Analytics!

For many businesses, deciding between Adobe Analytics and Google Analytics can seem a bit like picking between different brands of eggs at the grocery store – no matter which brand you pick, they’re all eggs, right?

Not quite. While both programs deal with capturing data from your website and web traffic, they both approach data collection differently. Picking the best platform for your business will ultimately come down to how you plan to use the data you collect.

The most important difference between Google Analytics and Adobe Analytics is that Adobe Analytics is an actual web analytics tool, while Google Analytics is more appropriate for web reporting.

Adobe Analytics is a digital analytics solution that is often compared to Google Analytics, even though it is used more often in a large corporate context due to its advanced features and great power. Real-time multichannel data collection, website effectiveness measurement, and customer experience across devices are a few of Adobe Analytics’ core capabilities.

Google Analytics is best for those who aren’t looking to break the bank on a web analytics platform. Its out-of-the-box reporting capabilities and easy-to-use interface allows marketers with any level of experience to analyze data. GA is best for organizations that may not have the resources to analyze user activity on a deep level but are looking to understand more about their visitors.

If your organization is willing to invest in advanced eCommerce and technical analytics, Adobe Analytics could be a better option. The platform is extremely powerful and customizable, meaning you can track whatever you want exactly the way you want it tracked. However, given the customization capabilities and upfront configuration required, your organization will need an expert resource if you choose Adobe Analytics. This platform is for experienced marketers looking for detailed data on their website’s user experience.

Feature-wise Comparison of Adobe Analytics & Google Analytics

#1: Functionality

Google Analytics puts the vast majority of its tracking power into collecting data about website and page traffic and performance. This type of approach to data collection allows marketers to glean insights into site traffic, page traffic, and content traffic. For marketers who base their marketing strategy on site and content performance, Google Analytics is an excellent tool. This allows marketers to identify the most valuable content for their users, and use those insights about that content to push people toward specific actions.

Adobe Analytics has a very different approach to analytics. It was designed to allow marketers to collect the data they need to identify demographic trends, segment their audiences, and develop user profiles. Adobe is focused more on the paths and actions of the individual site users rather than the page performance. The ultimate purpose for Adobe Analytics is to collect the data that will allow businesses to personalize the user experience on their site. As such, it is the better tool for businesses that are including personalization in their digital strategy.

#2: Customization & User Interface

Speaking of customization – Adobe Analytics was designed to be adapted to capture the specific analytics that the business needs. As a result, it is significantly easier to customize than Google Analytics and can often cost less to implement than a custom Google Analytics implementation.

While the user interface of the Google Analytics base package is very simple and easy to use, once you upgrade from the basic Google Analytics package and start using unique customizations, the user interface becomes much less user-friendly than Adobe’s. Since Adobe Analytics is based on customization, it has done a better job creating a unique and user-friendly dashboard, Adobe Workspace. This dashboard offers excellent statistical tools and visualizations that are significantly more insightful and helpful in situations that require breaking down the data or turning the data into visualizations or charts. This makes it easy for digital analysts to capture the specific data they are looking for and slice and dice it differently.

#3: Events

An event is a specific scenario that triggers data collection on the analytics platform – basically, events are what tell the platform which data to collect. For example, a common event that most analytics platforms automatically collect is the page view event. This event is triggered when a user visits a page, and it tells the analytics platform to add one to its current tally of page visits.

Adobe Analytics allows users to create up to 1000 custom events, and the latest version of Google Analytics (Google Analytics 4) has recently made it available on their platform as well – allowing businesses to create up to 50 custom events.

Custom events allow the business to capture highly targeted information about how users are relating to their digital brand. On the journey to personalization, these types of insights are critical. For businesses that aren’t looking to take a deep dive into audience segmentation or personalization, 50 custom events may be sufficient; businesses that are really growing their personalization practice will likely require more custom events to meet their digital marketing needs.

#4: Website Traffic

Obviously, the purpose of these tools is to analyze website traffic data. Both Google and Adobe Analytics are great at providing details of channels that bring this traffic. They also give you all the information you need to start enhancing the customer experience by providing key metrics such as detailed user behavior, acquisition, and bounce rate. Google Analytics allows you to examine the traffic from your paid and organic advertising campaigns, while Adobe Analytics also supports multichannel data collection and data processing.

#5: Attribution Model

The purpose of the attribution model is to assign a value to each touchpoint along the customer’s conversion journey. For instance, a buyer might learn about your products on social media before eventually purchasing them directly from your website.

Google Analytics offers six different attribution models, which you can compare against the marketing channels using the ‘Model Comparison’ view.

Adobe Analytics offers nine attribution models and a customizable one. The Attribution IQ feature also allows deeper analysis with calculated metrics. AA’s (Adobe Analytics’) options are really advanced. They make it easy to get a quick, clear overview.

#6: Report Building

GA (Google Analytics) has some excellent pre-configured reports that are ready to use right out of the box for tracking website performance, acquisition patterns, engagement, and so on. You do not have to create any report or add metrics/dimensions to view general website performance. However, GA reports are not interactive, meaning that if you share reports, they will not have the liberty to analyze in depth.

Adobe offers its own set of tools for advanced reporting and visualization within AA itself, which allows you to build your customized report. Building segments and creating calculated metrics can be done in a blink of an eye. As noted earlier, this illustrates the fact that Adobe Analytics is a complete analytics tool while GA is more of a reporting tool. AA combines predictive algorithms, built-in statistics, and the machine learning of Adobe Sensei (artificial intelligence tool) to make data science features accessible to analysts and marketers. Besides, the drag-and-drop functionality and plugin tool for MS Excel data make information sharing more practical. As a result, companies can share their reports without granting back-end access. It produces a ton of business-worthy reports that can help you make important decisions.

Adobe Analytics offers a flexible workspace with a drag-and-drop interface, unlimited breakdowns, attribution, and very flexible tables. Building Segments and Calculated Metrics is super quick to do.

#7: Pathing & Funnel Analysis

Thanks to the “Flow charts” feature, Adobe Analytics’ pathing analysis is impeccable and entirely out of the box. The visualization is so straightforward and simple that you will get the most insight out of it. By choosing a page or event, the report will show you what users did before and after. Simply click on any of the path’s touchpoints to get more detailed information.

Google Analytics is still not as fluent as Adobe Analytics’s pathing analysis. Additionally, it is not possible to use custom dimensions in path reports. Making a custom funnel in GA does allow you to view drop-offs, but it has limitations because it does not allow you to see users’ free flow. The fallout chart in AA – comparable to GA’s funnel – can be customized way further through eventual paths and custom dimensions/metrics/segments.

#8: Custom dimensions and metrics

A powerful way to send custom data to Google Analytics is through custom dimensions and metrics. These custom dimensions have a scope of hit, product, session, or user, while the custom metrics have values like time, currency, and numbers. GA4 only has a maximum of 20.

The hit level dimension in GA is comparable to the “Traffic Variable” (props) that Adobe Analytics offers. Adobe Analytics’s “Conversion Variable” (eVars) can have a scope of either hit, product, session, or user. AA offers 100 to 250 eVars, 75 props, and 1000 events. The customization choices are practically endless thanks to the ability to use eVars, sProps, and success events for data capture.

#9: Preferences

Google Analytics is best for small businesses and startups searching for conducting a free and accurate analysis of their website on their own. However, Adobe Analytics is a better choice for firms that are prepared to invest in advanced e-commerce and technical analytics.

#10: Data Retention

While Google Analytics only stores customer data up to 26 months, Adobe Analytics provides lifelong customer data storage. Additionally, Adobe Analytics can store cookies for approximately 15 years, whereas GA can only keep them for a month. This implies that organizations can concentrate on their clients for longer periods of time by using Adobe Analytics.

#11: Integrations

Third-party data connections work well with other Google tools, like AdWords and Search Console in Google Analytics, but lack native support for other third-party tools. Adobe Analytics has built-in data connectors for both Adobe and third-party tools.

#12: Support

Google Analytics has no dedicated customer support team. Adobe Analytics has free online resources and 24×7 dedicated customer support.

Google Analytics vs Adobe Analytics Pros and Cons

Google Analytics Pros

Works on a real-time basis
Support for real-time business decisions
Structured business reporting tools

Adobe Analytics pros

Data storage for the entire customer’s lifetime
Stores cookies for 15 years
Access to personal visitor data
Can track over 100 goals
The large number (and configuration options) for the dimensions and metrics that are available
The ability to create complex segments and calculations on the fly to look at any granularity of the data
The ability to correlate this data in the workspace without a lot of limitations and visualize it in a way that makes sense to your needs
The ability to use virtual suites, which allow complex organizations to see the data at high levels as well as separated down without needing to make multiple tracking calls on the sites

Google Analytics Cons

Data storage only for 26 months
Stores cookies for only 30 days
Unable to capture personal information
Can track only 4 goals

Adobe Analytics cons

Tracking data can be delayed by around 2 hours

Concluding Lines

Managing your data and interpreting what it says is highly important to devise a digital marketing as well as conversation rate optimization strategy. At the end, customer experience matters, and these tools can help you know your customers better!

As we reach the end of this comparison, hope the points mentioned help you decide on an eCommerce Data Analytics tool that fits your bill. For your ease, we have tried answering a few frequently asked questions about Google Analytics and Adobe Analytics here.

For eCommerce-focused digital marketing services, get in touch with us. We have data analytics experts that can help you with almost everything around data and tools!

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Minal Joshi is a content marketer at Krish with a flair for eCommerce and Digital Commerce aspects. She is a MarTech fanatic with a knack of writing with which, she helps brands to curate, create, & commence digital brand positioning. Sharing insights via articles, case studies, eBooks, Infographics, and other forms of content creation is what she lives for. Being an ardent traveler, when not writing, you'll find her sipping coffee into the mountains or petting a stray.

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