Skip to main content
TrustRadius
Google Analytics

Google Analytics

Overview

What is Google Analytics?

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…

Read more
Recent Reviews
Read all reviews

Awards

Products that are considered exceptional by their customers based on a variety of criteria win TrustRadius awards. Learn more about the types of TrustRadius awards to make the best purchase decision. More about TrustRadius Awards

Reviewer Pros & Cons

View all pros & cons

Video Reviews

3 videos

Data Vs Information: Google Analytics Polarizes User
04:24
Easy to Train Clients: A Digital Consultant Gets the Most Out of Google Analytics
04:14
How Google Analytics Propels Marketing Capabilities to the Next Gen
02:43
Return to navigation

Pricing

View all pricing

Google Analytics 360

150,000

Cloud
per year

Google Analytics

Free

Cloud

Entry-level set up fee?

  • No setup fee

Offerings

  • Free Trial
  • Free/Freemium Version
  • Premium Consulting/Integration Services
Return to navigation

Product Demos

The Most Useful Google Analytics Reports: My Top 6 GA Reports

YouTube

Path Exploration in Google Analytics 4 (practical examples and 4 ideas) || Path Analysis

YouTube

Google Analytics Tutorial (de) - Die wichtigsten Funktionen - Erklärt von einem Google Mitarbeiter

YouTube

Funnel Exploration in Google Analytics 4 (Funnel Analysis in Analysis Hub)

YouTube

UTM Tracking in Google Analytics | Lesson 13

YouTube

3 ways to view Funnels in Google Analytics

YouTube
Return to navigation

Product Details

What is Google Analytics?

Google Analytics Video

Google Analytics Overview

Google Analytics Technical Details

Deployment TypesSoftware as a Service (SaaS), Cloud, or Web-Based
Operating SystemsUnspecified
Mobile ApplicationNo

Frequently Asked Questions

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.

Google Analytics starts at $0.

Adobe Analytics, Contentsquare, and Coremetrics / IBM Digital Analytics (discontinued) are common alternatives for Google Analytics.

Reviewers rate Availability highest, with a score of 10.

The most common users of Google Analytics are from Small Businesses (1-50 employees).
Return to navigation

Comparisons

View all alternatives
Return to navigation

Reviews and Ratings

(3710)

Attribute Ratings

Reviews

(126-150 of 183)
Companies can't remove reviews or game the system. Here's why
victor pease solano | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Google Analytics is the main metric system for all mobile and web apps. We even define the same id for the web and mobile version of the same app and we can have consolidated insights because Google Analytics can discriminate information for every platform. The live view is excellent to identify the effect of external events affecting the app.
  • Live activity, you can monitor your app at the very same time you are using it.
  • Filters, you can define filters like geographic location, client platform, time periods.
  • User behavior can show you how your application is used.
  • The session duration time is not that accurate.
  • The experiments feature is not that easy to use.
Google Analytics is well suited for worldwide apps or multi-branch intranet sites or multichannel (web and mobile) apps.
Adam Weller | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use GA in our interactive marketing department to track visitors and clicks across our various web sites. It helps us track what areas of our sites are working, which links need more attention, which areas have the most success, as well as track users from the beginning of marketing campaigns all the way through to the end of the "sales" process.
  • Reporting - clean and organized
  • Options - between the basic and premium packages, metric are available for almost any type of tracking you can think of
  • Usability - easy to integrate
  • Sometimes the results in GA doesn't match the results with other tracking devices our company has in place, such as email marketing results, and other analytic-measuring tools
  • Javascript-blocking programs render GA unreliable
  • Presents a ton of data without providing much of an idea on what to do or how to interpret the data
Google Analytics is well-suited towards tracking most straightforward interactive marketing campaigns - emails, click data, download data, user visits, opens, and things of that nature. It is less suited toward providing up to the minute data results - sometime it can take several hours before the data shows up, so you might want to look elsewhere if you need instant metrics.
February 05, 2016

Analyze Your Life

Angela Skees | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use Google Analytics code on every one of our 6 or so websites. I personally have set up the accounts in GA and then insert the code onto the homepage or back end of our websites. Most website builders now do come with analytics built in, but I do like to compare what they report versus what Google provides. It is very robust and follows visitors to each site and will show the time they spent, the way they navigated and where they left. Very helpful for determining what parts of the sites are most popular for sales as well as what needs to be simplified.
  • traffic to the site is very easy to see
  • allows for comparison of time frames to see if your sales or site upgrades are making a difference
  • can also show real time traffic to the site, useful to see if commercials, ads or eblasts are directly generating interest.
  • sometimes it is hard to find the exact data you are looking for as they frequently upgrade and move data around
  • the live traffic viewer is still in beta
  • the homepage is a little confusing to navigate as there always seems to be a subfolder to click on to get to your acutal site data
Google Analytics is great for small businesses as it is free to implement and set up on your sites. You do not need to have an IT staff or trained analytics people to start seeing the data. The software is pretty user friendly and encourages use on all sites, regardless of internet skill or training. Might not worry about it if you have a larger staff though.
Andrew Schell | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We are using Google Analytics as a segment of our whole analytics platform, what we can't get from Google Analytics we are exporting the data to be used in Excel for Microsoft Power BI.
  • It's simple.
  • Easy to use.
  • It's free and plays well with other platforms as it exports to Excel via CSV.
  • This might be counter intuitive but it needs to be smarter, I have to program it to do stuff and I barely know all the details. Offer better training or courses on how to configure and tweak GA.
  • More color in the GUI.
  • Create an easier sense of flow... hell hire me to work for Google Analytics and I will create a spike in new user growth.
  • Learn to think 4th dimensionally.
February 04, 2016

Love GA. Must have.

Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Google Analytics is critical to understanding the effectiveness of our marketing and customer behavior on our website. I couldn't run the business without it. We use it company-wide, though we're a small startup. As an e-commerce business, the reporting from Google Analytics is among the most important in our business.
  • Traffic measurement
  • Marketing ROI
  • Audience demographics
  • Customer behavior on site
  • Always want more granularity
  • Better and automatic spam exclusion
  • Tighter integration with AdWords
Every business with a website should run Google Analytics. Period.
February 03, 2016

GA review

Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
I actively used Google Analytics within a previous role at Johnston Press. Although I didn't use Google Analytics everyday it was being used within only parts of the business. For example the marketing team used Google Analytics a lot on their micro sites and on marketing emails as it allowed them to view and edit the data very easily without having to go through the data analyst team. Since Google Analytics is so easy to implement it allowed for very quick and easy implementation when speed was essential.
  • Easy and quick to implement.
  • For very little effort you get a lot of data and information on your audience.
  • The reporting UI is very clean and user friendly.
  • Using the URL as a basis for all the data can make the reporting messy in places.
  • Creating goals and conversion funnels can be a little tricky for novice users.
  • The data can seem a little superficial on the surface when compared to the more sophisticated digital analytics software.
Google Analytics works very well for users that require quick and basic implementation of digital analytics. The basic implementation works really well to understand your audience at a higher level and how they interact with your website. Where Google Analytics falls down is if you want a real deep analysis on your audience, as the data is sometimes just not deep enough. This can be solved by implementing extra pieces of code in Google Analytics but I feel like most businesses pick Google Analytics because it looks pretty.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
I manage numerous features that Google Analytics offers on a weekly basis and report data and trends directly to our company's CEO and marketing director. I use Google Analytics to stay on top of traffic that results from all channels, including organic, direct, referral, display, pay-per-click, and social media. Our in-house marketing team looks at my findings to monitor trends and changes in our company's online marketing efforts. We are heavily invested in pay-per-click advertising through Google, Bing and Yahoo!, and Google Analytics lets me track everything relating to our ad(s) performance on a few easy-to-access screens. Google Analytics simplifies the reporting process with its intuitive interface and left sidebar drop-down options. All of our live traffic, analytic data and conversion counts are readily available when people at our company want me to access them.
  • Traffic reporting for our company's website. All channels are on one screen, and I can drill-down into each channel for a more thorough evaluation of where our traffic is coming from.
  • Excellent for pay-per-click advertising. We run close to 100 pay-per-click ads at various times, and each one is directed to a specific landing page with a call-to-action. I easily add the URL of these landing pages in our Google Analytics Goals for accurate reporting.
  • Mobile reporting. Google Analytics lets me determine our number of mobile visitors, and it provides a breakdown of mobile versus tablets, and each type of device (ex: iPhone) is also in Google Analytics reporting feature. This is extremely helpful because we are running mobile-specific ad campaigns on Google.
  • Google Analytics currently has just 20 Goals settings. While it is possible to create an additional set of 20 Goals, it would be great if up to 100 (or more) were available in one list. As it stands now, we have several "buckets" of 20 goals each, and it takes time to go from one to the other and manually count our Goal conversions, and their percentages or total conversions.
  • Email or chat support. Google Analytics is an enormous and often intimidating platform, and sometimes there are questions that need to be answered right away. Email or chat support for Google Analytics users who are spending money on pay-per-click campaigns would be a tremendous benefit.
  • Add all Google platform links within one another. Google Analytics is fantastic, but as an SEO specialist, I also need quick access to Google AdWords. I need to log into both, and if they were integrated with the same login and password, it would be far more convenient.
I think Google Analytics is necessary for a business of any size, especially one that is running paid ads online. Without Google Analytics, you would not be able to see how your website is performing or identify areas that need improvement. It is an excellent platform for managing website traffic, time on site, page views, bounce rate, conversions, etc. I use just about every tool and option that Google Analytics offers, and I can tell you that I would be "left in the dark" without it.
Chris Coppenbarger | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
I recommend and implement Google Analytics for nearly every company that I develop and consult for. It only requires a few lines of code in order to set it up. I can then pass on the credentials to whoever needs them at the company so they can view the information regarding their website statistics. Google Analytics solves a number of problems with regards to business needs in view of who visits the site and what may need to change to either keep visitors on the site and/or attract new visitors. It also provides for the use of special campaigns to track new visitors. There is a live analytic view where you can see how visitors are clicking through your site in real time.
  • Allows you to deep-dive into each page on your site to see how long a visitor stayed, how they exited, and what they may have clicked on. This is important to better develop content for those pages to keep visitors longer.
  • A real-time view allows you to see where visitors go on your site from start to finish and how long they stay. You'll want to tweak your site based on these visits, even while they're visiting.
  • Campaigns allow you to try different setups on your site in order to attract new visitors or keep recurring visitors.
  • Better explanations of mobile browsing would help to gather information on what needs to be tweaked regarding mobile use.
  • Better views of the real-time use. It gets difficult to view and browse this at times.
Google Analytics is very well-suited for e-commerce sites and news sites where there is a lot of traffic. With e-commerce, you can tweak the site when you have specific products that may go on sale or you want to drive traffic to. Smaller static sites such as a small business with only information might not benefit as much from Google Analytics.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Our marketing team currently uses the Google Analytics platform, for analyzing our traffic and sources. It has been incredibly helpful as we push our potential partners and customers through the funnel.
  • Lowering our bounce rate.
  • Increasing our click-through rates.
  • Increasing our average session duration.
  • I would love to see an integration with platforms like HubSpot.. it is hard when the two numbers are so completely different.
  • Adding a capability to further back track clicks and see how they were brought to our page would be helpful.
  • Further parsing the demographics would be ideal in developing company personas.
This is the ideal platform to identify and track customers. We use this in board meetings, company presentations and to develop our NPS score.
Jason Montoya | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
As a freelance marketing consultant, I recommend using Google Analytics to track website activity. It helps us see how visitors are getting to the website, what they're doing while there there and how long they're staying. It is installed across my websites as well as most of my clients. Ultimately, the tool gives us metrics to see how effective our various digital marketing efforts are impacting our prospects and clients.
  • It provides a depth of information and insight. There is more information than anyone could realistically harness themselves.
  • It's easy to install and start using.
  • It integrates into other reporting tools fairly easily.
  • Spam traffic is a big nuisance and they've yet to really do anything about it.
  • The reporting is clunky and hard to setup.
  • Sometimes it more complicated then it seems it ought to be.
Google Analytics is a great tool for any new business website or personal blogger. It is easy to install and free to use so it tends to be a great starter resource.

If you are less technically inclined, I'd recommend finding something easier to use. Some of the terminology and interface can be confusing at times.
Benjamin Lipsman | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use Google Analytics to track traffic to our websites, identify segments (e.g. organic, referral, mobile/tablet), track conversion for various goals (lead collection and revenue), monitor use of new features, etc.
  • Ability to track web traffic, attribute to sources & mediums.
  • Ability to segment to view visitors by desktop, mobile, and tablet.
  • Exporting reports in various formats for different use. Management likes easy to read PDFs, while marketing analysts prefer Excel data.
  • So many features that it's hard to keep up.
  • Sometimes difficult to dig into particular segments or criteria.
  • Limits in automation of reports, such as time length (no way to set one start date & get automated reports on regular frequency, e.g. Year to Date report weekly, always starting on 1/1 and extending time each week.
  • It could be better at showing flow/path through site.
Emily Janowski | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Google Analytics is used, day-to-day, by a specific department at our organization. The team, in its entirety, has access to our clients' dashboard, but does not necessarily have familiarity with all capabilities or knowledge.
  • The tool is very user intuitive. If you're not familiar with the tool, it's still fairly easy to navigate and understand.
  • The data provided simplifies things and makes it easy to understand.
  • When there are uncertainties, the documentation and self-service help provided by the Google team is great.
  • I've run into a few instances (more so with Google DFP) in which there have been updates to the platform itself, but documentation that sent me in a loop and didn't provide more thorough documentation on the changes.
The only times I can think of when Google Analytics might not be appropriate, is when trying to pull social media or metrics that are not captured by Google Analytics --- duh.

Beyond that, though, it is a great tool that offers valuable information if you have the team to support you in analyzing the data that's pulled and captured. Great insights can be made in terms of recommendations for the end product.
Billy Barker | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use Google Analytics in the Marketing department to monitor all traffic to our website. We have Goals set up to track form conversions and to detect the source of the lead. We use Site Content to look at analytics on a page per page basis to identify visitor behaviors to each which then helps us determine if the page is converting well or engaging enough. Google Analytics provides a lot of useful data and is a very important part of our business. We also integrate our AdWords account to be able to see all of that information as well.
  • The User Interface is very easy to navigate and find what you are looking for. With some much data this is crucial.
  • I like the quick access to all historical data. e are continually changing the date range to compare data from a month ago, a year ago, or when the company started until now - it's very useful for us and how we like to monitor things.
  • I really like how you can view your data in so many different way. Basic tables/spreadsheets of data, line charts, motion charts, and pie charts. There are also advanced options to let you manipulate the data even further such as adding a secondary dimension.
  • I would like to see more "canned" options in the date range drop down. It was be nice to have options already there such as This Year (YTD).
  • It would be nice to have weekly or monthly emails sent to me with key data from that time range. I don't always have time to login into Google Analytics but I'm always glued to my Inbox. This feature may exist, but I'm not aware of it.
I think any company that has a website needs to have Google Analytics to gain knowledge about all the traffic to their website. Understanding how people get to your site and what they do once they are there is invaluable and a must if you are wanting to grow your business and better understand your audience or leads.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Google Analytics is extremely insightful and offers a ton of good information for any business or company to track what is going on with your website and advertising. We use it daily to monitor website activity and see how our advertising is performing. You can see very in-depth data and metrics that can help you figure out where your traffic is coming from.
  • Track Website Visitors - this is helpful to see where people are coming from
  • Reports - gives you a lot of information that helps with reporting to clients
  • Breaking down data - helps break down all types of demographics which is helpful for advertising
  • It is hard to use at first when you aren't familiar with the product
  • It can be hard to get certified with the program
It is really helpful for anyone with a website. You can use all of the data from your website for advertising and really use it to determine where people that you could be targeting are found and can find where your customer base may be. I think it is always important to have a tracking code on your website.
Roy Morejon | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Google Analytics provides powerful digital analytics for anyone with a web presence, large or small. It's one of the most powerful digital analytics solutions available - and it's free for anyone to use.

At our digital marketing agency, we require all clients to use and install it site-wide, so we get a better picture of visitor data across the entire organization's website. Typically we give administrator access to the marketing department as they need actionable data to make decisions daily, based off visitor engagement onsite.
  • Which marketing initiatives are most effective
  • Accurate website traffic patterns/trends
  • Which keywords resonate with prospects and lead to conversions
  • Google has done an excellent job with Analytics over the years
If your site generates 10 million or fewer hits per month, then Google Analytics is free. If your site generates more than 10 million hits per month, then Google offers increased limits as part of Google Analytics Premium.
Rob Dautel | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
We use Google Analytics (GA) for various external sites around our ecosystem. Not only is GA a free tool, but it's many features and new ability to connect and monitor eCommerce activity are great. It is very helpful in monitoring web traffic and activity and helping to determine next steps in marketing and web projects. It's permission based roles allow us to assign users for overall use, dashboard or reporting only, etc. We can also create users and dashboards corresponding to specific sites, regions, or products. Sure, there are things GA can't do that others can, but we find the reverse is also true. Overall GA is a very good and helpful tool especially with it's recent updates from late 2013 to the Universal Analytics engine.
  • It's free. Can't beat the price.
  • It's permissions, reporting, and dashboards allow for great flexibility for users to get what they need
  • It has advanced features many don't know of such as eCommerce reporting tools, goals and trending tools, and a plug-in API.
  • GA still misses a few of the features some of the commercial tools do in regards to in depth data mining and trending.
  • It would be nice to see more Social sentiment in the GA system. This is an up and coming area that many are now adding to their tools, but most of the algorithms are so-so. Given the data Google captures they could build a good picture for social sentiment, but today are doing very little other than some social connectivity.
Be prepared to spend the time in the tool and read the documentation. Unlike commercial tools that can offer training or a person to walk you over the details, there is a lot to GA, but it can be hidden and takes time to find and learn. Out of the box, it works well, but the real depth takes time to discover and learn how to use.
Michael Baker | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Used mainly by marketing, but some aspects used by our web tech team. We evaluate our email sends, our CPC programs, our social media, and our display campaigns...along with website performance in general.
  • Great for tagging links
  • Good for monitoring traffic flow through website
  • Good for tracking goals, events and conversions
  • Ecommerce tracking presents some challenges
  • Not easy to track to our Pinterest and Facebook sites
  • "Not provided" is a horrible change!
For most SMB's I would definitely recommend Google Analytics. If a business sells a lot of 'complex' products with many attributes, then Omniture may be a better solution.
David Stockelberg | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
I use Google Analytics for multiple clients in a variety of branches and of different sizes, from big to small. As I work as an AdWords consultant, our main purpose of using it is to measure ROI for paid search campaigns. But of course, implementations reach beyond that.
  • Event Tracking
  • Measure AdWords ROI (on all levels)
  • Easy to implement
  • Cross Domain Tracking
Google Analytics can be tricky to set up when you have multiple websites that you send visitors between (i.e. cross domain tracking).

Great improvements have been done when it comes to attribution modelling last year, but the need for improvement is still there.

If your client/boss has no or very little knowledge of how GA cookies and attribution work - be sure to be very clear when explaining that and how to interpret results.
Matt Howarth | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Google Analytics is being used by my organization to track all of our site metrics, from visits to conversions and revenue. We use Google Analytics to segment and the analyze our site data in many different ways. Some example include desktop vs. mobile, time of day, day of week, source, medium, etc.
  • Google Analytics allows us to easily view site visits, conversions, and conversion rate by source, medium, campaign, keyword, and/or content. This is extremely important when considering how to spend our time and money.
  • Google Analytics is able to provide data in real-time. This is vital when launching new initiatives and wanting to find learnings as soon as possible.
  • Google Analytics allows us to compare conversion attribution models very easily. This is important because it allows us to better understand our users' conversion path and our website conversion funnel.
  • Google Analytics could allow more rows to be exported at one time. If a report is more than 2000 rows, it must be exported in chunks and combined into one spreadsheet.
  • Google Analytics could link with other popular advertising channels (ex. Microsoft BingAds). This would provide greater insight and help improve business ROI.
  • Google Analytics could make recommendations for our website based on data (ex. focus on a specific webpage due to high bounce rate).
I would recommend Google Analytics to anyone who has a website. It's not necessary to need to analyze your data all the time, but to have the option to view site activity down to the specific page and know how each traffic source behaves on that page, that information is invaluable to a growing business and/or website.
Patrick Buffum | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Google Analytics was used within my organization to track our website's traffic. The metrics that we gathered and reviewed included CTR, unique visitors, pages viewed and time spent on the site. It was used primarily by the marketing department with relevant information relayed to sales. We didn't use it to address business problems per se, but rather to calculate the effectiveness of our marketing campaigns through web traffic.
  • Detailed breakdown of web traffic by any specified length of time (could for correlating with campaigns)
  • Time on site, % New Visits and Bounce Rate help qualify potential customers
  • Ease of Use! Very intuitive and well laid out
  • It would be nice if the free version had more tracking tools, but that is understandable.
  • I am unsure of the turnaround of analytics data for free users. Even premium accounts will not see immediate turnaround.
  • Multiple variations of a keyword may often be reported but you must manually group them together in reporting which could become tedious. Ex. Organic keywords searched that include: Startec, Startech, Starteck will all be compounded separately even though all searches were variations of the company name.
One scenario for which I found this service particularly well suited was for tracking and calculating ROI on trade show spending. For example a company may purchase banner ad space for a trade show and have site links included at the end of an attendee email. Using Google Analytics you can measure the traffic from the trade show homepage (referral) and the CTR/time spent from the email links.
While this service is very impressive for one that is free it is far from all encompassing. While the platform reports data it is not an all in one tool that allows you to monitor how your actions directly influence inbound web participation.
Lena Prickett | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Google Analytics is currently being used in my organization by the Marketing department to capture overall data on web traffic, determine keywords for SEO, track which pages are most/least trafficked, and where we are losing visitors (bounce rate, exit pages etc). We also track clicks referred by our enewsletter. Google Analytics helps us determine which types of content are popular; which referral sources generate the most traffic; and which navigation paths our users take through our website. We are planning to make use of some of the more advanced features like goal conversion down the line, so we can identify exactly which paths lead to conversion and which keywords are the most valuable for our conversion goals.
  • Provides quantitative insight into your web presence. Much of our online marketing would be guesswork without the hard data provided by Google Analytics - and decisions made based on data are generally better decisions.
  • Integrates different online marketing activities. Through integrating with our enewsletter client and providing data on referral sources like social media, search, and advertising, Google Analytics gives us a broad picture of how our various online activities work together to support our marketing goals.
  • Shows you where you're weak. The "Behavior Flow" display is a valuable window into how our visitors reach our site, which pages lead them where, and which pages result in exiting our website. This information helps us improve content and readjust our strategy as necessary to make sure the right visitors reach the right content and the right time.
  • It's so robust it's scary - I know there are tons more features we could be using to our advantage within the program, but they're too complicated or detailed to access easily.
  • Permissions are a little wonky. It's hard to authorize multiple users on our team to access the necessary levels within the program, and it's not clear what permissions different users need to make specific changes - until you get an error message saying you're not authorized.
There's really no reason not to use Google Analytics. The fact that it's free is incredible - it is the very first program I suggest clients set up to start getting a real handle on their online presence. Just answering simple questions like "Where does my traffic come from?" would be impossible without GA.
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Google Analytics is being used by the Digital team who reports on website traffic for our business' 5 websites, and then those reports are distributed throughout the business to the respective "owning" departments.
  • Free Product - A great benefit of Google Analytics is that it is a free product that has many capabilities. It performs the functions we need it to without additional fees.
  • Event Tracking - this is a wonderful feature of Google Analytics that allows us to track many different kinds of user interactions on our sites.
  • Sources - Google Analytics provides the sources from which users came to our sites, which allows us to use Google Analytics as a kind of lead generation platform for two of our sites, from which we can build relationships with others sites that link to us.
  • Session Duration - Google Analytics' Session Duration calculation is not very accurate, since it only measures the duration of time between interactions on the site. The first interaction is page load, but then if the user spends 5 minutes on that one page and reads it thoroughly, receives the information they need, and leaves the site, since they are counted as a "bounce", their session duration is 0, even though they were engaged. They only triggered one event (page load) before leaving the site, so their session duration didn't calculate as it should. There are methods to implement timers, etc. however, the standard Session Duration numbers could be inaccurate without implementing other methods in place.
  • One Page Sites - we have one Single Page Site, and installing Google Analytics to give us accurate numbers was more difficult than we anticipated. One challenge was creating a way to record bounces correctly, since a users could visit the site, be fully engaged, and leave the site without ever triggering an event. We used Google Tags to create scrolling and menu event tracking to solve this problem, but out-of-the-box, Google Analytics is not the most accurate reporting tool for a One Page Site.
It just depends on the needs of the user. For One Page Sites, it will need more tailoring and work when implementing tracking; however, with standard multi-page sites, it is a good, free resource that provides reporting that can be very useful for a company.
John McElhenney | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Google Analytics is the starting point for all good digital marketing strategies. It's free, it's fairly accurate, and it's the benchmark everyone knows and uses for things like Unique Views and Page Views.
  • Charts and graphs are good in GA. You can load your presentation or report with hard numbers and nice charts. BUT, this is also the problem with GA, there are so many charts and graphics, and they look so good, you sometimes forget you have to actually analyse them and make actionable suggestions for improvement.
  • The basic numbers from 50,000 down to granular analysis are all available in GA.
  • You can build very sophisticated dashboards, lead funnels, and eCommerce reports inside GA. The learning curve for these types of uses are high, but free and extremely valuable.
  • Connecting AdWords, AdSence and your eCommerce wins to GA, gives you a massive overview of your digital business.
  • Don't rely too much on the top-level dashboards. They are nice and broad, but often don't give you much to go on for building recommendations.
  • The eCommerce connection between GA and your shopping process is not always accurate and may take several tries to get it working. Just reporting the presentation of a Receipt page does not really equal a definitive sale.
  • The depth of the rabbit hole in GA is amazing. You can spend hours, days, weeks, building tools and maps and strategies, and still miss the actionable goals. Don't be mesmerized by the charts and graphs either. Dig into the WIN for your client, and focus all your efforts there.
GA is free. If the client has a different system (one tied to their shopping cart, for example) you might not use GA as you complete reporting solution. But you have to know your GA numbers.
September 26, 2014

Google Analytics

Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Google Analytics is being used for: customer visits tracking, conversion rate calculation and event tracking over [our] website.
  • Describes overall page visits
  • Describes how many placed orders
  • Specific events can be added depending on the merchant need
  • Maybe it can be extended by providing more ways of capture and more ways of reporting
Google Analytics is free and developer friendly to work with.
Jonathan Bentz | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Google Analytics is being used by our organization like most businesses use it - to track daily activity on our website. Primarily, the marketing department uses GA to monitor traffic patterns and track sources for goal conversion. Information gathered from GA is then shared with sales and operations as necessary to make business decisions. GA allows us to know what traffic we are getting to our website, where it is coming from, and how that traffic is contributing leads to our sales funnel.
  • Monitors website traffic patterns. If you don't have a handle on where or how your website is getting traffic, I can't think of a better tool to use to get that information.
  • Tracks goal conversions. If you have a specified path you want visitors to take to complete an action on your website, GA does a great job of reporting to you how many times that path has been completed.
  • Integrates with other Google tools. If you aren't using Analytics, but are running AdWords campaigns or monitor site health in webmaster tools, Google allows you to sync them all together.
  • Google used to tell us keyword referrals. Kind of annoying that they don't anymore, but life goes on.
  • They change the names of important metrics from time to time, generally into more ambiguous names. Again, kind of annoying, but a couple Google searches will bring up 100s of SEO blogs that tell you what means what - so not the end of the world here, either.
  • It doesn't tie-in (yet) with other Google tools like YouTube Analytics and Google+, or Google My Business. So in some cases you still need to monitor information from multiple areas of your Google-verse.
I guess if a business is looking for a web analytics software that integrates into ERP or something, then Google Analytics may not make sense. Otherwise, it's hard to say another tool for monitoring web traffic, conversions, or revenue generated from your website is better suited to meet your needs than Google Analytics.
Return to navigation