Rich Analytics with Open-Source Piwik
June 04, 2014
Rich Analytics with Open-Source Piwik
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Software Version
2
Overall Satisfaction with Piwik
I came across Piwik while looking for alternatives for Google Analytics and promptly installed it on two websites for a trial. It's a good tool for tracking visitor actions on your site, with some particular strengths in helping users analyze social and other interactions. This review is of the free version, though enterprise level packages are available.
- One of Piwik's strengths is the provision of customizable widgets for different bits of analytics data. The ability to add and remove them, change dates and more makes this a flexible way to visualize data.
- The visitor log section is also rich, providing date, keywords, actions and more in a single table, which makes it easy to identify your most effective content.
- And the visitor actions table includes both bounce rate and time on site, so you can quickly tell which pages have the most engagement.
- Data display is a strength for Piwik, as you have access to overview charts while simultaneously being able to drill deeper.
- My impression is that you can do more with goals in other analytics packages, though the basic functionality works well in Piwik.
- The WordPress integration can be buggy. Though it worked well most of the time, in one case I had to remove the Piwik code to fix a site error.
- While Piwik had no direct impact on ROI, it has made it easier for me to identify the web pages that were missing the mark. Fixing those is sure to have a positive impact on attention.
I have used a number of analytics products, including Google Analytics, Clicky and GoSquared. The winning feature of Piwik is the compact, rich data tables, which make it a good addition to the analytics mix. While I'm not throwing out the others, I've continued to find Piwik useful.