Google Analytics vs. VWO

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Google Analytics
Score 8.3 out of 10
N/A
Google Analytics is perhaps the best-known web analytics product and, as a free product, it has massive adoption. Although it lacks some enterprise-level features compared to its competitors in the space, the launch of the paid Google Analytics Premium edition seems likely to close the gap.
$0
per month
VWO
Score 8.9 out of 10
N/A
VWO is an A/B testing and conversion optimization platform that enables growing businesses to conduct qualitative and quantitative visitor research, build an experimentation roadmap and run continuous experiments on their digital properties. With its 5 capabilities Plan, Track, Test, Analyze, and Target, it brings the entire CRO (conversion rate optimization) process at one place. VWO helps online businesses follow the process- and data-driven conversion…
$49
per month
Pricing
Google AnalyticsVWO
Editions & Modules
Google Analytics 360
150,000
per year
Google Analytics
Free
Subscription
$99.00
per month
TESTING
Get a Demo
The classic VWO A/B testing solution
CONVERSION OPTIMIZATION
Get a Demo
The all-in-one platform for all your optimization needs
ENTERPRISE
Get a Demo
Customized solution with advanced AB testing and conversion optimization capabilities
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Google AnalyticsVWO
Free Trial
NoYes
Free/Freemium Version
YesNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoYes
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Google AnalyticsVWO
Considered Both Products
Google Analytics

No answer on this topic

VWO
Chose VWO
VWO is much better than others at providing an easy way to run tests and gather data, but we do currently supplement it with Hotjar for better heatmap tracking and detailed visitor tracking. We also use Google Analytics for general traffic sourcing and behavior, as well as …
Chose VWO
VWO is much more flexible, more affordable, and is easier to implement. We also appreciate how responsive and helpful VWO customer service is.
Chose VWO
We use VWO not in competition with, but alongside other tools, as we believe a mixture is the best recipe for success. Hotjar is a slightly different offering and has some very strong heatmap/ journey mapping capabilities. We tend to use it for that, with the insight feeding …
Chose VWO
VWO has worse usability and isn't as flexible as the other platforms. Also, the insight that Qubit and Optimizely generates is actually accurate and can be used compared to the reports that VWO provide.
Chose VWO
I was not involved in Optimizely, nor did we implement it outside a free trial I believe, but VWO seemed to do generally the same things with a lower cost, though I could be mistaken.

I have used Qualtrics in the past. It is very good for survey creation and logic. I know some …
Chose VWO
VWO is way more comprehensive and powerful. We selected VWO because of multiple factors including pricing, capabilities, and last but not least, support. It's quite important to be able to liaise with the platform when building tests.
Chose VWO
We enjoy being able to pause and edit tests whenever we want. There are also a lot of additional functionalities on VWO, like recordings.
Chose VWO
VWO is a good compliment to GA and Hotjar but it's expensive. Hotjar has a lot of really good analysis features for a very, very reasonable price. GA is free but comes with a high operational cost and learning curve. GA and its suite of tools is improving but I don't have …
Chose VWO
At the time we made the decision, these tools didn't allow for AB testing or at least a more built out infrastructure for implementing the testing. They allow us to analyze data though.
Chose VWO
I wanted to select Google Optimize. I used Analytics, Ads and Tag Manager, but they are different from VWO. Google Optimize is quite comparable. As you can do A/B-tests as well. You are only limited to a few test at the same time. And it is not possible to make heat maps. That …
Chose VWO
The user experience was quite similar at least on that level we were and are using these kind of products. We decided to stick with VWO because of a more attractive pricing, the ease of use of the WYSIWYG editor and the user segmentation.
Chose VWO
I had not used any other testing tools prior to using VWO, but I was able to learn how to use VWO relatively quickly.
Chose VWO
We chose VWO because it combines all the features that we need in one. All of the other products we have looked at have been missing something.
Chose VWO
VWO is a very simplistic and sleek platform. Even those without previous experience can really set up any test and implement any changes. VWO is definitely the easiest to use.
Chose VWO
VWO is more of an entry level tool, unless you purchase the enterprise solution, which includes a lot of additional features including IP targeting, custom attributes and segmentation (which allows you to filter results by a referrer URL, if a visitor clicked on a specific …
Top Pros
Top Cons
Features
Google AnalyticsVWO
Testing and Experimentation
Comparison of Testing and Experimentation features of Product A and Product B
Google Analytics
-
Ratings
VWO
7.6
8 Ratings
12% below category average
a/b experiment testing00 Ratings8.21 Ratings
Split URL testing00 Ratings9.11 Ratings
Multivariate testing00 Ratings8.88 Ratings
Multi-page/funnel testing00 Ratings6.41 Ratings
Cross-browser testing00 Ratings8.21 Ratings
Test significance00 Ratings7.31 Ratings
Visual / WYSIWYG editor00 Ratings7.31 Ratings
Advanced code editor00 Ratings9.11 Ratings
Visitor recordings00 Ratings6.41 Ratings
Preview mode00 Ratings6.41 Ratings
Test duration calculator00 Ratings6.41 Ratings
Audience Segmentation & Targeting
Comparison of Audience Segmentation & Targeting features of Product A and Product B
Google Analytics
-
Ratings
VWO
8.2
1 Ratings
7% below category average
Standard visitor segmentation00 Ratings9.11 Ratings
Behavioral visitor segmentation00 Ratings7.31 Ratings
Traffic allocation control00 Ratings9.11 Ratings
Website personalization00 Ratings7.31 Ratings
Results and Analysis
Comparison of Results and Analysis features of Product A and Product B
Google Analytics
-
Ratings
VWO
7.0
1 Ratings
20% below category average
Heatmap tool00 Ratings6.41 Ratings
Click analytics00 Ratings6.41 Ratings
Scroll maps00 Ratings6.41 Ratings
Conversion tracking00 Ratings8.21 Ratings
Goal tracking00 Ratings8.21 Ratings
Test reporting00 Ratings7.31 Ratings
Results segmentation00 Ratings5.51 Ratings
Experiments results dashboard00 Ratings8.21 Ratings
Best Alternatives
Google AnalyticsVWO
Small Businesses
StatCounter
StatCounter
Score 9.0 out of 10
Kameleoon
Kameleoon
Score 9.5 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Siteimprove
Siteimprove
Score 8.7 out of 10
Kameleoon
Kameleoon
Score 9.5 out of 10
Enterprises
Contentsquare
Contentsquare
Score 8.6 out of 10
Kameleoon
Kameleoon
Score 9.5 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
Google AnalyticsVWO
Likelihood to Recommend
9.0
(183 ratings)
8.5
(105 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
9.0
(51 ratings)
8.7
(20 ratings)
Usability
9.9
(8 ratings)
8.2
(2 ratings)
Availability
10.0
(4 ratings)
9.1
(3 ratings)
Performance
10.0
(2 ratings)
8.2
(1 ratings)
Support Rating
7.0
(42 ratings)
9.1
(4 ratings)
Online Training
10.0
(2 ratings)
6.4
(1 ratings)
Implementation Rating
9.0
(7 ratings)
9.1
(3 ratings)
Configurability
6.0
(2 ratings)
8.2
(1 ratings)
Ease of integration
10.0
(1 ratings)
3.6
(1 ratings)
Product Scalability
10.0
(2 ratings)
8.2
(1 ratings)
Vendor post-sale
10.0
(1 ratings)
9.1
(1 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale
9.0
(1 ratings)
8.2
(1 ratings)
User Testimonials
Google AnalyticsVWO
Likelihood to Recommend
Google
Google Analytics is particularly well suited for tracking and analyzing customer behavior on a grocery e-commerce platform. It provides a wealth of information about customer behavior, including what products are most popular, what pages are visited the most, and where customers are coming from. This information can help the platform optimize its website for better customer engagement and conversion rates. However, Google Analytics may not be the best tool for more advanced, granular analysis of customer behavior, such as tracking individual customer journeys or understanding customer motivations. In these cases, it may be more appropriate to use additional tools or solutions that provide deeper insights into customer behavior.
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Wingify Pvt Ltd
Our marketing team does a lot of creative testing around messaging and imagery. VWO is well suited for this type of testing and can yield great results if you define your conversion goals correctly. However, when we have tried to do more substantial/advanced changes through VWO (such as re-positioning content or modifying elements in a form), we have had some challenges and not been able to get the desired tests working correctly.
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Pros
Google
  • Multiple reports to see website use and behavior
  • Allows you to customize reports with days, weeks, months, and years
  • You can build out a dashboard to easily view stats from multiple websites in one place
  • You can share analytics reports via the dashboard, automatically emailed PDFs or in other formats
Read full review
Wingify Pvt Ltd
  • VWO has a strong support team willing to help provide answers to questions during the setup process. During setup, we had some questions regarding implementation across a significant number of sites and they were able to ease dev team concerns and provide detailed best practices to streamline integration.
  • Some of the initial results of a few of the initial tests raised some questions internally. We setup a call and were able to quickly address the questions and find some opportunities to leverage moving forward.
  • I discovered a bug within the UI that lead to some questions internally. I was able to report it and the problem was fixed rather quickly and their team followed up with a thank you for reporting it and to report the issue was now resolved.
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Cons
Google
  • Data sampling is somewhat inaccurate on the free tier - this is addressed in premium but is expensive.
  • Some of the UI is very similar in naming when presenting different data, some in-situ information might be useful.
  • Gotchas around filtering and data validation.
  • Implementation can be tricky, it can take a lot of time and expertise to get a full, accurate picture of your metrics.
Read full review
Wingify Pvt Ltd
  • The user interface within VWO does take a bit of time to get used to, especially as it pertains to switching back and forth between tests. When running multiple experiments on a site at a time, a clear and succinct dashboard for everything in one place would be helpful (as opposed to needing to switch between A/B, multivariate, etc).
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Likelihood to Renew
Google
We will continue to use Google Analytics for several reasons. It is free, which is a huge selling point. It houses all of our ecommerce stores' data, and though it can't account for refunds or fraud orders, gives us and our clients directional, real time information on individual and group store performance.
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Wingify Pvt Ltd
It's great value and we think we've ironed out all the major teething troubles. However, if we experience any more bugs or problems that significantly slow us down then we're seriously considering switching to Optimizely, which I haven't personally tested but have heard great things about from my CRO peers
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Usability
Google
Google Analytics provides a wealth of data, down to minute levels. That is it's greatest detriment: find the right information when you need it can be a cumbersome task. You are able to create shortcuts, however, so it can mitigate some of this problem. Google is continually refining Analytics, so I do not doubt there will be improvements
Read full review
Wingify Pvt Ltd
I gave Visual Website Optimizer a rating of 8 because it is overall a great product to use. Setting up and keeping track of various tests is easy and straight forward. The only reason why this product is not rated higher is because the support documents online leave a lot of room for improvement.
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Reliability and Availability
Google
We all know Google is at top when it comes to availability. We have never faced any such instances where I can suggest otherwise. All you need is a Google account, a device and internet connection to use this super powerful tool for reporting and visualising your site data, traffic, events, etc. that too in real time.
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Wingify Pvt Ltd
I have not experienced an application error or unplanned outage with VWO.
Read full review
Performance
Google
This has been a catalyst for improving our site's traffic handling capabilities. We were able to identify exit% from our sites through it and we used recommendations to handle and implement the same in our sites. We have been increasing the usage of Google Analytics in our sites and never had any performance related issues if we used Analytics
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Wingify Pvt Ltd
VWO doesn't appear to slow down our website at all, though some customers with adblockers like UBlock Origin have been known to not see entire pages if VWO is making changes to the page at a macro level (background, font, etc). This is rare though.
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Support Rating
Google
The Google reps respond very quickly. However, sometimes they can overly call you to set up an apportionment. I'm very proficient and sometimes when I talk to reps, they give beginner tutorials and insights that are a waste of time. I wish Google would understand my level of expertise and assign me to a rep (long-term) that doesn't have to walk me through the basics.
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Wingify Pvt Ltd
While their online document support is lacking a simple email to their support team will almost always get responded to the next day. It has however taken more than one email to explain the problem to the support team till they understood the problem. The solution I was given also only half fixed the problem the rest I figured out on my own.
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Online Training
Google
love the product and training they provide for businesses of all sizes. The following list of links will help you get started with Google Analytics from setup to understanding what data is being presented by Google Analytics.
  1. How to Use Google Analytics for Beginners – Mahalo’s how-to guide for beginners.
  2. A beginner’s guide to Google Analytics – A free eBook walking you through Google Analytics from setup to understanding what data is being presented.
  3. Getting to Know Your Google Analytics Dashboard – The title says it all! This is a brief post with one goal: to introduce you to the Google Analytics dashboard.
  4. Google Analytics for Beginners: How to Make the Most of Your Traffic Reports– This guide doesn’t cover setup, but it does a great job of helping you to better understand the data being presented.
  5. Google Analytics Video Tutorial 1: Setup – A video presentation that walks you through Google Analytics setup.
  6. Google Analytics Video Tutorial 2: Essential Stats – A video presentation that introduces you to some of the most important data being presented in Google Analytics.
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Wingify Pvt Ltd
Training was good, just limited to the onboarding process. They walked through all of the steps it takes to get started in VWO and each of the modules, along with giving us ideas for starting our first test. I feel like it could be better if there was a guided process within the VWO program to continue to educate you along the way, and a way to turn that off for experienced users.
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Implementation Rating
Google
I think my biggest take away from the Google Analytics implementation was that there needs to be a clear understanding of what you want to achieve and how you want to achieve it before you start. Originally the analytics were added to track visitors, but as we became more savvy with the product, we began adding more and more functionality, and defining guidelines as we went along. While not detrimental to our success, this lack of an overarching goal resulted in some minor setbacks in implementation and the collection of some messy data that is unusable.
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Wingify Pvt Ltd
Overall, the implementation of VWO is straightforward. If you've got a straightforward way of deploying code to all of your test pages, either a good CMS or a TMS, then implementation should be a breeze. There is no tweaking to be done to the code itself, and once deployed it has the flexibility to cope with different VWO modules (tracking, conversion analysis, session analysis) without modification.
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Alternatives Considered
Google
I have not used Adobe Analytics as much, but I know they offer something called customer journey analytics, which we are evaluating now. I have used Semrush, and I find them much better than Google Analytics. I feel a fairly nontechnical person could learn Semrush in about a month. They also offer features like competitive analysis (on content, keywords, traffic, etc.), which is very useful. If you have to choose one among Semrush and Google Analytics, I would say go for Semrush.
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Wingify Pvt Ltd
I used Google Optimize when it had just launched. It was therefore not yet a competitor to VWO. I haven't used it in roughly half a year time, so a lot has probably changed. I still use Hotjar for certain features that VWO offers, but which I think function better in Hotjar. I for instance prefer the Hotjar heatmaps, because I can elect to ignore certain elements on the webpage, such as a cookie consent pop up. A simple difference which makes me like Hotjar recordings more is that I can view a recording and click next, rather than going back to the overview and selecting the next recording.
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Scalability
Google
Google Analytics is currently handling the reporting and tracking of near about 80 sites in our project. And I am not talking about the sites from different projects. They may have way more accounts than that. Never ever felt a performance issue from Google's end while generating or customising reports or tracking custom events or creating custom dimensions
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Wingify Pvt Ltd
The product seems infinitely scalable for our needs (small business) and we've never had any issue with loading VWO-edited elements. I will say, though, that online customers with ad blockers have been known to not see certain VWO elements as their third-party scripts are disabled.
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Return on Investment
Google
  • It has helped us gain understanding of what is going on on our website.
  • It has helped us determine areas that need fixing (i.e. pages with extremely high bounce rates may need to be redone).
  • It has helped us understand our biggest avenues for bringing traffic to the website and business in general.
  • It has helped guide our website redesign.
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Wingify Pvt Ltd
  • The ability to offer a CRO service is greatly enhanced by VWO, as it allows us to run tests for clients
  • The editor means to some extent we don't need much developer resource to run the tests, lowering costs of doing so
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ScreenShots

VWO Screenshots

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