The reporting and analysis have been much simpler than ever since the launch of Workspace in 2016. Before 2016, Reports & Analytics was the heart of reporting even though we had other options like Report Builder, Adhoc Analysis, Data Warehouse etc. Have seen multiple blogs on the advantages of using Workspace versus Reports & Analytics (Reports) but not the other way around. To be honest, Reports & Analytics still have few advantages over Workspace and below are the scenarios where Reports & Analytics can be preferred over workspace.
Full Path Report
Full Path Report is one of the most important report to understand the website visitor navigation i.e. Across entire website. If the Path Flow for a particular page is to be known, it is available in the workspace but not for the entire website. Path Navigation for the entire website is the cornerstone which provide visitors with insights on top paths and the traffic contribution.
Path Finder Report
Can be mirrored to Workspace Flow Report, but the primacy here is that we can pick the pattern based on our requirement. The output will also be in the table format to help us download/extract as required unlike flow diagram.
Previous & Next Pages Report
Everyone who used Reports & Analytics earlier will miss this report in Workspace for sure. Experts have few workarounds to recreate the same in Workspace, but they are not available by default.
Download more than 400 rows
Not valid from 10 September 2020 as the workspace update included the ability to export more than 400 rows. For more information, click here.
Wow, yes. We can download any report in Reports & Analytics without the limitation of 400 rows. I have particularly criticized Workspace for this limitation and still wonder why it has not been upgraded so far. Do not wait, just use Reports & Analytics to download a report that has more than 400 rows (Up to 50,000 rows); simpler than Data Warehouse if you have only one dimension.
Also, the download option has two more formats Excel and Word for our perusal.
Extract & Schedule Options
Modern Analysts might think that data extraction and scheduling is possible only in Workspace or Data Warehouse, but that is not true. Since because Data Warehouse don’t support metrics related to visits we often use Reports & Analytics. I still use Reports & Analytics for some integrations[Using FTP] since we can virtually cover all the metrics in Adobe Analytics unlike Data Warehouse. Granularity is also possible, so no hassles.
Bots Traffic and Bot Pages
Quick check on this would always be nice right?
So, Reports & Analytics is still useful in many ways as Workspace require workarounds. There are few other reports in Path Section like Path Length, Page Summary and Clicks to Page etc., but above are used frequently. Understand and use Reports & Analytics’ benefits whenever possible!
