If you manage a website, there’s a good chance you are using Google
Analytics (GA) to keeping track of your visitors, or you are considering using
it. GA is an excellent product, and given the fact it’s free makes it a very
viable and attractive solution to many website owners.
Here Google Analytics alternatives, and see how they measure
up.
Piwik
Having just released version 2.0, Piwik is a serious contender. And it’s
free (though there is a rather expensive hosted version).
It is self-hosted, which requires keeping the monitoring server up. But
combined with disabling cookies, having it self-hosted allows you to comply
with the European cookie law without the cookie notice.
Most of its features are up to par with GA, and due to it being open
source it has a more open environment than GA, like an open roadmap. It also allows
you to import log files, something not possible with GA. It has a very nice
mobile app for both Android and iPhone (GA has an official app only for
Android), and offers a detailed (but not so pretty) real-time overview.
Downsides?
On the downside, it counts time spent on the page the same way GA does.
The interface looks cluttered, as if it’s missing a stylesheet. And while its
main focus is being a GA alternative, it can’t compete with Google’s AdSense
and AdWords integration. But to be fair, most alternatives can’t either.
Why
choose Piwik over Google Analytics?
If you want to step away from GA and want to host it yourself, Piwik is
a solid choice. And it’s your safest bet if you need to work with the cookie
law.
Parse.ly Dash
Suggested by our Editor in Chief Ophélie Lechat, Parse.ly (they
call their product Dash, but it is better known as just Parse.ly) is measuring
you as you are reading this article. That’s right, it’s used by SitePoint.com
(and by some other large publishers as well). Dash is targeted at publishers,
so it might not be the best for, let’s say, an e-commerce site.
Parse.ly is a pricey option, but the great thing is they track via posts
and authors. It’s a publisher’s dream, as you can compare using articles,
authors, published posts, social shares, etc. It helps you figure out popular
topics to use as a basis for future articles, based on both your site and
worldwide trends. It also tries to predict future traffic as accurately as
possible.
The real-time feature is pretty amazing and really complete, letting you
begin analyzing metrics right away. There is a pretty impressive dashboard as
well, if you want to have a quick look how your site’s doing. And it is very
easy to set up reports on anything important and have these emailed to you on a
recurring basis.
Downsides?
Parse.ly is mostly focused on the performance of your site, articles,
and authors. This means there is no detailed analysis of where your visitors
are coming from, what they are doing on your site and certainly no e-commerce
features. But you are free to combine your data with GA, and from a publisher
point of view I can certainly see the benefits.
Why
choose Parse.ly over GA?
Parse.ly knows how real-time should be done. And the fact that the
product is focused on traffic generation makes it very convenient for a
publisher of a large site to use it for making content decisions.
KISSMetrics
Now let’s move over to the complete opposite of Parse.ly, KISSMetrics.
This one is all about tracking your visitors, where they came from, what they
do on your site up to the point that they (hopefully) buy something (or they
perform some other conversion). KISSMetrics is all about optimizing your
conversion rate by giving you excellent tools to drill down to the most
frequently used order paths and most lucrative referral sources.
Once logged in you will be seeing lots of dollar signs, which is good since
this is your revenue. KISSMetrics is like “Conversions” in GA on steroids. It
is so highly focused on giving you exact metrics that you can even set up
refunds to be deducted from your revenue. Installation can be a hassle, but for
most popular systems they provide plugins.
Downsides?
The real-time functionality shows you some basic information about the
current events (like a purchase) being done on your site. Visually not very
appealing, but watching money rolling in in real time can be satisfying.
Why
use KISSMetrics over GA?
KISSMetrics is the king of conversions, and if you are running an
e-commerce business this tool will really help you increase revenue.
Clicky
Clicky has
an impressive feature set. You can view heat maps and uptime monitoring, for
example, so you don’t have to use an additional service for this. It’s also one
of the most well-known names when people discuss a Google Analytics
alternative. In addition to lots of features, Clicky even has a free limited
plan. So why aren’t we all using Clicky then?
Although it describes itself as “Real Time Web Analytics”, the real-time
feature isn’t that impressive. Also, its real-time analytics feature is called
“Spy”, so it’s difficult to find it until you start clicking around in the
navigation bar. Basically, Clicky looks like it isn’t built for large numbers
of visitors, and it provides the same basic information as GA.
Downsides?
So, even though there are a lot of features, they all seem to be very
basic. It has video tracking that connects to YouTube, but YouTube provides
better analysis options. It has keyword tracking for incoming visitors, but you
can’t see what is happening after a visitor has entered your site. Even though
Google traffic mostly has “(not provided)” as keywords, with large sites there
are still plenty of data to analyze and that’s simply not possible with Clicky.
The positive side of this simplicity is that it takes you about 10
minutes to become familiar with all of its features, in comparison to the hours
you can spend on GA after which you still get the feeling you’re missing half
of it.
Why
choose Clicky over GA?
Because it’s simple. GA can be very overwhelming and can be overkill
when you’re just running a simple blog. And although the heatmaps feature is a
paid feature, it’s still very cheap with Clicky.
Woopra
Woopra is
another provider billing itself as a real-time analytics provider, and they
deliver on the promise. Woopra shows you how many visitors are online, and how
many of them are actually reading. You can even zoom in on any visitor and see
what they have done so far on your site, not only in the last few minutes, but
over the last 90 days.
Woopra keeps the full history of every visitor on your site, and you can
determine yourself how you want to approach this data (number of pages viewed,
entrance page, etc). Digging into your data is much easier than with GA, and it
clearly focuses on visitors instead of raw numbers. It’s almost like the only
thing missing is the name of each visitor (actually, integrating it with your
customer base does give you names!).
But that’s not all. You can also integrate Woopra with your online store,
and view what your visitors are doing. This can be simple things like adding a
credit card, but it can also be someone who is requesting a refund after
looking at a number of related products. This is valuable data, since it can
give you some good insight in upsells or cross sells (so no refund is needed).
It’s also possible to set up a promotion campaign, and get real time results
for the purchases (or subscriptions for a newsletter for example) being done.
Downsides?
Woopra does take some time to set up because you need to be sure it’s
fully integrated. But after that, it is way more powerful than GA if you like
to dig deep into your data.
Why
choose Woopra over GA?
Both the real-time and the general analytics are more advanced than GA.
It has the same steep learning curve as GA, but it’s worth the effort. The only
drawback is the fairly high price for successful sites.
Conclusion
Although Google Analytics is a great product, there are some good
alternatives, each of which has its own benefits.
I’ve done my best to summarize the experience with these services, but
if you notice a feature with one that you particularly enjoy, or if you want to
recommend another one, let us know in the comments.
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