Google Analytics

shows basic indicators like page views, sessions.

provides breakdown by country, city, languages.

real time data

retention data display is not very convenient

it is relatively hard to organize events

it is relatively hard to switch from one property to another

Track site traffic

Track audience acquisition

Track conversions on your site

Track behavior across your site(s)

Can be a challenge to learn as a beginner

Clearly segmented dashboard for visits, commerce, performance metrics etc.

Relatively simple user and property management.

Useful exporting options for external integrations and analysis.

A variety of viewing options for different data, so that it can be understood better or drilled down into.

Intuitive UI for navigating historical data.

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.

Basic performance measurements

Traffic sources

Demographic data

Data Studio integration

Optimization

Multi-site setups

Connection to non-Google products

Traffic analysis

Demographics

Geographic usage

User training

Get rid of the new version

Provide quick and easy onboarding

Has details on everything

Raw data, up for interpretation

Multi-user functionality

Courses available for education

While raw data is nice to have, I do wish there was an easier way to provide reports from Google Analytics directly. Something that could answer questions straight-forward for people.

I would appreciate "helpful hints" or a cheat sheet of some sort, so when quickly searching for something such as time on a certain page, I can find it quickly.

I really don't have a third point!

User pathing and flows can help a site manager understand better how site visitors move through their content in order to streamline and present a better experience

Acquisition reporting shows not only where traffic comes from, but also how visitors from particular sources engage with the website as compared to each other.

Ecommerce conversion tracking goes beyond simple revenue reporting to show how different products or product categories sell, and how the checkout and cart process could be better optimized.

As a legacy user of Analytics, it still rankles that keyword tracking was removed, especially if you're managing SEO and organic search efforts.

GA does not yet have a good solution for cross-device user tracking; Facebook has been able to figure this out with smarter cookies, you'd like to think Google could as well.

Analytics defaults to last-click attribution, and while there is an attribution modeling section, it doesn't universally touch the entire platform, only a small subsection of reports. Allowing changes to the attribution across the entire set of reports would be a big lift.

Source analysis

Bounce rate

Time in page

Regions of visitors

Hard to learn to use properly

Flow between pages is difficult to interpret

Unknown sources (you have the number but you can't identify the source)

Errors in social networks numbers of visitors

Captures all the data from our site

Measure campaign performance

Segmentation

Can be a huge learning curve for some if never used Google Analytics

Setting up an alert system is missing

Better interactive notifications in taking actions quickly

Google Analytics helps you know where the traffic on your website is coming from. You know which campaign, whether paid or organic, is performing. You can get the real-time data of traffic on your website.

It allows you to create your own custom goals and track them. You can also use the same event/goals to optimize your paid media campaigns on Google Ads.

Google Analytics can be used to generate extensive reports and also to create real-time custom dashboards.

Using Google Analytics, you can change the attribution model to more accurately distribute the credit to different touchpoints that led to a conversion.

It takes time for a new person to get acquainted with the interface since there are so many options available. It can be confusing for the new user to navigate through the platform. The UI can be further made easy.

It takes time to get the support for any troubleshooting. It's not always available on chat/phone. Most of the time we have to rely on emails.

There are limited number of audiences you can create on analytics. For a large website with multiple verticals, they would need this limit to be increased.

Creating a funnel is still a mystery for many people. This is a feature many of the users are not leveraging. Google should make the setup process easy and also should make people aware through tutorials/guides.

It shows the sources of your traffic, such as organic search, referrals, or direct.

It shows the website flow in a really useful way that helps you understand what customers do when they come to your site.

It's simple to setup and very widely used by SEO professionals.

It picks up a lot of bogus traffic from spam bots.

A lot of the specific information is not shown. For example, for 95% of the organic traffic, you can't actually see what keyword they typed in to find your site.

A lot of traffic can't be tracked and is simply shown as "direct."

Tracking usage in different dimensions and segments

Custom segments and reports

Tracking A/B test results

Attribution

It's complex when you start learning how to use it, but once you get to know it, it's really useful

The motion chart feature does not work and I cannot find any online documentation to tell me why

The help docs are very outdated

Flexibility, especially with site tagging

Thorough data fields, if properly set up

Interesting visuals, like time series, pie charts, website flow visuals, etc.

The UI is a little clunky, and I always have to spend a second trying to remember how to find the data I'm looking for

I haven't personally found a good training guide on Google Analytics. So learning it was/is slow and cumbersome.

I would like to see some more customization options when it comes to reporting and setting up custom reports.

Very in-depth platform to track a multitude of website analytics

Easy to understand metrics to allow informed decisions

Great for making reports to present to people

Easy to collaborate with multiple users if needed

Has a ton of integrations with other marketing products

There is a learning curve if you want to get the most out of the platform

Setting up conversion tracking can be tricky

You may need a webmaster to install the tracking code if you don't have web experience

We set up conversions for each organization even if they do not engage in direct sales online. This has the benefit of holding everyone accountable to the same mission.

Google Analytics also becomes the permanent database of the organization's digital activity. Need to easily compare this month's sales against prior years and cart the impact of seasonality. It's easy to set up fast and easily saved for future retrieval.

Handling the data from millions of sites has allowed Google to see what information is requested and then prompt users.

There are definitely some data vagaries around URLs and channels. Subdomains can easily be misconfigured as can referring sites.

Years later, we all still mourn for the missing keyword data. Yes, we used to get keyword information from every Google search. That loss is only somewhat mitigated by linking Search Console with Analytics.

There is still a lot of user confusion around how Google Tag Manager works. We understand, but we're in that business. Setting up Analytics to work on your sites isn't as easy as looking at an FAQ.

The entire configuration process could be easier for micro-businesses. There are small businesses that could use these tools, but have a steep learning curve and often don't have the budget to pay someone to handle things for them. It seems like a basic turnkey solution could be available to them on certain platforms.

Measuring traffic.

E-commerce/ROI data.

Visually solutions for website pain points.

A/B Testing of website.

Complexity.

Quick and easy to set up.

Powerful metrics and traffic flows.

Ability to enable detailed metrics through action tracking.

Visualizing metrics on detailed actions can be tricky to set up.

Exporting dashboards/reports could be a little more emphasized.

Innovation - clear leader in this space with constantly evolving solutions

Custom reporting - drill down to very granular metrics

robust insights - access to many insights that are not available anywhere else.

convoluted eco-system of apps - not always clear how they're different.

steep learning curve - courses are helpful but new apps are frequent

Limited 3P integrations

Out of the box reports

User permissions and settings

ability to share custom reports with others (even those without accounts)

Can't pull custom dimensions into out of the box reports

Visualizations built in have room to be improved

With larger data sets, the small "default" number of rows becomes annoying

Pretty accurate website visitor numbers

Ability to manage multiple websites on the same account

Monitor website behavior

Get audience insights

It is confusing and complicated to fully understand

It's difficult to figure out how to see what you want to see

Track users

ROI

Measure ad performance

Would like more advanced options

Easier interface

Allows you to get a great overview of your website performance.

Ability to set up customized tracking and dashboards.

Easy to use.

Add more features for data analytics.

Better customer support.

Easy to use

Easy to export data

Numerous standard events/KPIs out of the box

Support for custom events

Little to no training required

Available 24/7/365

Faster data ingress (intra day)

Better accuracy (sampling)

More graphic / UI pivots on charts and data visualizations

More granular alarming / event alerts

Easy to track traffic to all pages on our websites

Compare which pages get the most visits

See geographic location data shown on nice looking maps

Compare usage over time with visual graphs and comparisons

It can be difficult to navigate intuitively because there are a number of features present that I don’t use

In the old days we could see what search phrases people were using who had arrived on our site, which is no longer available for privacy reasons. I get it, but that data was really useful

Clear path to find metrics

Ability to be transparent within the organization