Quick down and dirty analytics software
September 13, 2019
Quick down and dirty analytics software

Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Software Version
Google Analytics
Overall Satisfaction with Google Analytics
Google Analytics is being used to track and analyze any web traffic. It addresses questions like: "How many people are filling out our trial form?", "How many use this web page?", "Who's coming to our site and from where?" and more. It's mostly being used by the Marketing department, but is being used by some product teams to track key KPI's and determine the performance of prototypes or production products.
Pros
- Wealth of data. There is too much data, honestly.
- It's very customizable. It's very easy to drill in and out and modify parameters to meet a specific need.
- It's easy to get set up. Right out of the box, it requires no customization.
Cons
- It doesn't think for the user much. It basically overwhelms them with information, which can be hard to digest and can lead to some false assumptions.
- Oftentimes, nuanced questions are really hard to find good answers for. Something that should be simple like: "how many users logged in?" is often really difficult depending on how your web application is built.
- Data visualization isn't very useful. The graphs seem useful at first, but honestly end up using the tables most of the time. Occasionally I'll spot some trends in the data vizualization, but it's pretty uncommon.
- It's highlighted areas of improvement that can be made. It's hard to quantify it though.
- There's been no negative impact as far as I can see. It cost nothing.
Google Analytics is the path of least resistance. It doesn't cost anything at all, and is easy to get set up quickly. It's integrated into almost every CMS platform out there. If you just need to see who's coming to your site, where they are going it's a great tool. Otherwise, there are other tools for more nuanced analyzation. Things like screen recording software, heatmaps, surveys, etc.
Do you think Google Analytics delivers good value for the price?
Yes
Are you happy with Google Analytics's feature set?
Yes
Did Google Analytics live up to sales and marketing promises?
Yes
Did implementation of Google Analytics go as expected?
Yes
Would you buy Google Analytics again?
Yes
Comments
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