CANDDi and Lead Forensics - Why is my data different?

When comparing website visitor tracking tools, it’s usually best to try before you buy! It’s no secret that one of our biggest competitors is Lead Forensics, and many of our customers look to switch to CANDDi for one reason or another.

That’s why you can run our CANDDi free trial against your existing Lead Forensics software to compare results. How else will you know how to make the best decision for your business?

We simply want to provide you with real data so you can see real results. Obviously we’d prefer you to join CANDDi at the end of it all (we’re only human), but that doesn’t mean we’ll start manipulating your data for our benefit.

Because we’re providing transparent, honest results, it’s natural to see some discrepancies! Whenever you’re comparing tools like CANDDi, it’s completely normal to see differences between the data sets. So, don’t worry about it!

Why does this happen?

All tracking tools work differently. This means there’ll be differences in the way their data is reported. Lead Forensics relies solely on IP lookup of static IP addresses. CANDDi uses IP lookup too, but we also use first-party cookies to track individual devices.

This lets us monitor the activity of a particular device, rather than the IP address of the whole company. If you want to know more, see how CANDDi identifies individuals.

So, because of all this, the data that you’ll see can differ from time to time. That’s completely normal!

Reasons you’re seeing different results

I’m confident that all of the data you’ll see in both Lead Forensics and CANDDi will be similar, it’ll just require a different interpretation.

That’s why you’ll always have the help of our Customer Success team! Throughout your free trial, you’ll have the team on hand to answer all of your questions and make sure you’re getting the most out of CANDDi.

In the meantime, I’ve put together this article to explain why these discrepancies occur and what you can do about it!

1. First things first, check you’ve got your CANDDi tracking code on every page of your site.
   
   This might sound silly, but it can be easily missed! Just check your CANDDi dashboard to find your code and copy and paste it to the header/ footer of your website. We’ll handle the rest!
   
   If you’re tracking multiple domains, double check CANDDi is tracking all of them. There’s a ‘Site Management’ section in the ‘Settings’ tab of your CANDDi dashboard where you can check what’s up and running.

2. Like I mentioned earlier, all tracking tools work differently. Lead Forensics relies on the data provided from an IP lookup, whereas CANDDi tracks individual devices through cookies.
   
   As a result, Lead Forensics doesn’t have the ability to differentiate between different visits of the same visitor. What we mean by this is that if 1 person from a company returns to your site 100 times, Lead Forensics will count this as 100 separate visits.
   
   Obviously this will cause some differences when you start comparing the two!

3. CANDDi also joins together multiple companies. Since you can track more than one website with our dashboard, if they have more than one domain and visitors are looking between the two, we’ll recognise this!

4. At the end of the day, IP tracking is not an accurate science. There’s always going to be information that CANDDi can find that Lead Forensics can’t and vice versa.

5. CANDDi shows you all the data. LF shows you all the names of the company and the times they visited, but it doesn’t show IP address. So you have no way to check if it’s interpreted correctly.

What can CANDDi do to help?

To understand the data, we can do a comparison between the records in Lead Forensics and CANDDi.

Unfortunately, Lead Forensics doesn’t reveal IP addresses. So, in order to match the data, we’ll need an extract including the time and the number of pages.

Ideally, we’d like your extract to be between a specific date range (so we can see the same data in CANDDi). We’d recommend around a week, but if you’re a high traffic site, then a day will suffice.

Following this, our Customer Success team will produce a bespoke analysis for you. We’ll match your Lead Forensics data to similar visits on CANDDi and explain/ highlight the differences that occur.

Ultimately, our free trial is exactly what it says it is. A trial period. The whole point of a trial is to experiment and figure out what works for you.

We pride ourselves on our ability to be honest, hence why we’re happy to show all the differences throughout! At no point will we try to bad mouth your existing tracking tool, but help you make the most out of the software you’re paying for.