A modern approach to analytics that's both flexible and powerful
April 20, 2017
A modern approach to analytics that's both flexible and powerful
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Software Version
Free
Overall Satisfaction with Heap
While Heap has a wide variety of uses across many different aspects of analytics, our organization primarily used it as a replacement for traditional web analytics platforms like Google Analytics. It's not built specifically for this purpose, but it works extremely well in this use case. As a results-oriented business based heavily on a sales and marketing funnel strategy, Heap was incredibly useful in tracking the journey a lead would make through our marketing material and signup flow.
- Heap is powerful, but you don't need to be a power user to take advantage of its features. With a simple interface, it's easy to assemble queries and reports on any kind of action users take on your site or app.
- Heap's ability to track individual users, leads, and customers through their entire journey is incredibly valuable. It can give you a more complete picture into how people are interacting with your site beyond the "perfect" user stories you've envisioned.
- Heap's visual design is clean and easy to navigate. The charts, graphs, and flow charts that it generates are easy for anyone to understand, and reports don't need any preparation before sending to upper management or C-suite members.
- Heap's pricing is not very transparent up front. Our plan required relatively low volume and the cost was more than reasonable, but with a large app or website, it's hard to know how Heap's costs will scale.
- Depending on the needs of your business and the size of your team, Heap may not be the only analytics package you need. It can be coaxed into performing many of the features of a traditional analytics package, but people who wish to get up and running without any configuration might prefer a different tool.
- Heap doesn't support native Android apps, so if this is a vital part of your business and you absolutely must have all data in one warehouse, you may have to choose another tool.
- Heap allowed us to intimately track the journey of leads coming into our sales funnels and find out where and when they were dropping off. It allowed us to make constant improvements to our lead generation tools and landing pages to improve conversion.
- Heap helped us see where visitors were getting "lost" on our main marketing website. It let us know what pages weren't getting attention and how we could give them more visibility.
- Heap even allowed us in a roundabout way to troubleshoot some UI issues on our site. By using the even visualizer, we could track specific buttons and screen areas that users were having trouble with.
Heap is built in a fundamentally different way from other web and app analytics tools. Instead of looking at an existing data structure and attempting to apply logic to it, you build queries and reports in Heap based on real actions that users take. You can create these flows yourself or use Heap's data to see what your users are really doing, not just what you think or hope they are doing. This user-oriented approach gives you a complete and accurate picture of your users' experience rather than leaving you attempting to come up with theories about why numbers and graphs look the way they do.