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Everyone knows how to use Google Analytics
April 10, 2021

Everyone knows how to use Google Analytics

Michael Weissberg | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Software Version

Google Analytics

Overall Satisfaction with Google Analytics

We use Google Analytics to determine what pages users are looking at, a rough estimation of conversion rate by channel, source, and paid and organic media, and generally determine how well our website is performing. While it's imperfect due to strict tracking regulations that we abide by, it gives us some good directionally accurate information to determine the best course forward.
  • Provides anonymized traffic data - where people come from
  • With proper implementation, shows the best source for converting users
  • Shows the time on site, time on page, and bounce rate, to determine the value of pages and content
  • Shows user flow - what's the path users are taking around your website?
  • Shows where users are dropping off
  • It would be helpful to track individual user paths around the site - presently, there's sampling, aggregates, and averages
  • Without a paid subscription, sampling is used, so you may only get a mostly accurate view of your website data
  • Doesn't play particularly well with GDPR, meaning users have to specifically opt in for tracking
  • It's free
  • It's easy to implement
  • It integrates well with just about everything
  • Google Analytics has allowed us additional information into media placements - both direct and programmatic
  • Determining the value of pages and which are leading to conversions (and which aren't)
  • Tracking customized events, with Google Tag Manager
Google Analytics is free! And while Adobe Analytics is arguably more powerful, it's paid.
Additionally, Google Analytics' integrations are vastly well known, thoroughly well (and more) documented, and used by more people. That means that it's also easy to find people that are well versed and expert-level users, so there's no need to re-train, or additionally train anyone to get the information that they're looking for. There are some advantages that Adobe Analytics arguably has in terms of features and capabilities, especially integrating with other Adobe products (complete with some neat AI personalization opportunities, if I understand correctly), but most people already know Google Analytics inside and out, know how to integrate it with other products (including Adobe products, since Google Analytics works with just about everything), and how to tie it all together, even exporting the data into things like PowerBI. There would have to be some very specific use cases, data requirements, or integration requirements or benefits for most companies to switch to something paid. Or, of course, privacy requirements - since I understand Google shares and tracks a lot of anonymized data by default, so there are additional potential compliance, safety, or other privacy-related advantages to switching.

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

Google Analytics is the best free program for website data, hands down. It's easily installed and integrates well with most consumer-friendly content management systems. So if you're looking to know general stats about your website : how many visitors, where they came from, where the users are coming from that do what you want them to do, this is a pretty good place to start. It also, of course, integrates well with other Google products - like Ads, Tag Manager, Survey, Optimize, and plenty of other things. So if you'd like to, for example, see how many people clicked on a button, implementing Tag Manager is usually as easy, then a few short steps later, you can see all your desired information directly in Google Analytics. With the new GA4, there's some great cross-user tracking, as well, so you can more easily see users moving between desktop, mobile, tablet, and an app. Google Analytics is also useful for seeing the physical location of different sources of traffic - so you can get a good idea if that media placement you went with (or anything else, for that matter) is actually driving relevant, converting traffic that's doing what you want them to do and sticking around on your site.

It is not good for tracking indivdual user paths or data - it's strictly anonymized and sampled.