What are the alternatives to Google Analytics?
Collecting data is easy. But the real challenge is to truly understand and transform it into data-driven decisions. In many cases, website owners find themselves paying someone that will do this for them. Choosing the right set of website analytics tools, will give you the same advantages as hiring an expensive analyst or an agency. Google Analytics may be the most popular choice today, but there are some great alternatives out there that might fit your needs even better. Let’s take a look at them and also discuss how and when to use each one.
1. Oribi
The only website analytics tool that makes data, that was available only for large companies with analysts, available for everyone.
Oribi is dedicated to making analytics easy for everyone, without the help from developers or analysts. This tool was developed for you to make smarter and – most importantly – faster data-driven decisions rather than assumptions or hunches.
A smart, AI-based interface and results-focused features make analytics a piece of cake. Oribi users highlight the beautiful dashboard that helps you keep track of everything important happening on your website.
A clear advantage is that Oribi is event-based, meaning it focuses on tracking events rather than traffic. Let’s face it, our hearts might jump by a traffic increase, but in the end, it’s irrelevant, if your traffic doesn’t bring you leads. By tracking events, Oribi helps you understand what really happens on your website and how visitors interact with your site.
The tool automatically collects 100% of your website events and conversions, without the need to manually define them by developers. Any change on your website, like adding a new landing page, will automatically be tracked and highlighted as a new event. Every event that calls for your attention will be reported to you in real-time. And by the click of one button, the tool creates jaw-dropping, exportable reports for you, ending the era of endless reports in Excel.
Our personal favorite is the “Breakdown” section, which gives you a detailed view of what your visitors are clicking on your site, from where they were referred, the browser and platform they are using to access your content, and which channel to focus on in terms of clicks and conversions.
After all, it’s so much more fun looking at our graphics and actually understanding what causes changes. Oribi gives you the information you need to understand your data and sets you free from being reliant on analysts. Your marketing efforts will never be a shot in the dark, but smart and informed decisions.
2. Clicky
If you wish to get your website data in real-time and have a simple dashboard, Clicky can be an option for you.
Clicky is a bit different from other website analytics tools. Its approach to easy analytics is keeping the information channeled towards your main focus. The slick look and easily customizable dashboards can help you focus on the data you wish to focus on. Next to the simplified dashboard, Click users especially value the highly easy navigation.
To get started you will have to add a snippet of code to your site, very similar to Google Analytics. Once installed, you will get access to Clicky’s features like customizable tracking, funnel analysis and individual visitor log. If you upgrade to the pro account, you will also get access to split testing, heat maps and uptime monitoring. All depending on what you need.
Here’s the cool thing: Clicky’s data is real-time – fully real-time. It’s updated immediately. This means you always have the complete picture of what’s happening on your site and how metrics are changing with every move you make in your marketing efforts.
The tool is strongest when looking at the latest data. Retrieving data from Clicky by a date range, i.e. you want to look at bigger time frames or check data from the past months, can be a little slower.
3. HotJar
HotJar claims itself to be a “tool that reveals the online behavior and voice of your users”. The tool focuses on qualitative data – meaning, everything that is not numbers. Users can select from a variety of features among both, analytics (heatmaps, visitor recordings, funnel trackings, and more) and feedback tools (polls, surveys, and more).
HotJar’s heat maps can help you understand how your website visitors are interacting with your website, their scrolling behavior, and where they click on. For example, if you upload a new landing page and you don’t yet know its performance, the tool shows you how your users who land on the new page are interacting with it, where they get confused, and what makes them convert (or not convert).
The session recording is a great feature and probably as close as you visually get to your visitors’ journey through your website. Depending on the plan you decided for, you will have a specific number of sessions you will be able to record at a time. In terms of recording details, you currently can only choose between recording everybody who comes to your site or only the ones who stay for more than 30 seconds. You cannot track users according to more detailed criteria, such as only the ones who visit your store or who come from a specific channel.
Qualitative data can give you a good impression on your website visitors. Keep in mind, though – numbers don’t lie. This tool can be a great addition, but you will also need a website analytics tool that follows a more quantitative approach, to get everything out of your data.
4. MixPanel
Mixpanel was built for product managers.
Hence, its main goal is to track events on your product or mobile app, both for Android and iOS. The tool helps you to track the actions your users are performing as well as to analyze them.
All your website events data will be collected from the moment the Mixpanel script is installed on your website. In order to see your events data in your dashboard, you will be required to manually set the events you wish to track. Once the events are defined, all their data will appear on the dashboard. For events you’ve added to MixPanel, you’ll be able to see count, trends, which users used them and in which order.
MixPanel’s main features are funnels, A/B testing of different variations of your mobile app and tracking their results, tracking individual users by their sessions and viewing trends of selected events, among others.
MixPanel requires you to define the actions you wish to track and focus on. This can be done either by adding code annotations or using a visual selector. Once selected, the events you wish to track will add up to your dashboard, with the metrics of your choice presented. In case you are running A/B tests and make changes to your site regularly, you will need a developer who makes changes in your website code accordingly.
5. Heap
Heap Analytics is one of the youngest companies in this list, with similar functionalities to MixPanel.
The tool tracks basically all events on your website, product or mobile app – from video play to form submission. If you want to segment users according to their behaviour or try to follow specific visitors through their user journey, Heap also tracks individual user behaviour.
It allows you to manually select events you wish to analyze. All your data is recorded, so you can always go back and answer any question you might only have later – all the way back to the day the Heap code was installed, even if it wasn’t an event you initially chose to track and display on your dashboard. This feature makes the tool especially valuable for product managers who want to learn about their product and improve its performance over time.
With its variety of features and the availability for websites, products and mobile apps, Heap is a great tool for product managers looking for data of their product. Currently, it only supports iOS apps. So, if your product includes a mobile app for Android, and you are looking for a tool suitable for your mobile app, check MixPanel.
Try at least one or more of these Google Analytics alternatives and discover some new ways to become data-driven.
With the right tools, you will be able to understand how to increase your traffic and what drives people away from your website. Your data can help you get the most of your marketing efforts and increase your conversions – which we all aim for in the end, right? For the best results, you need to choose the tool that fits your business best. We hope this list will help you with that.