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An alternative to using Google Analytics on your website

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Re: An alternative to using Google Analytics on your website

#241

Post by earthboundkid »

duhi88 wrote: post #204
clairity wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "[GA]...doesn't have creepy features that let you spy on individual users" google reserves that for itself so as not to lose it's dominance of online advertising and targeting. why would they share their bread and butter with the little guys?

They made a statement within the last few years that they don't use GA data for their own purposes. The scarier implication is they don't need GA to understand web trends. They can collect far more data using Chrome, AMP, Android, Ads, and more.

Is there a link to that? I've always suspected they feed GA data back into SER. But I don't know one way or the other.

It does seem like Google is in a textbook case of dumping to prevent new competitors from arising though.

Re: An alternative to using Google Analytics on your website

#242

Post by jefftk »

saagarjha wrote: post #233
jefftk wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I host my comments externally. For example, https://www.jefftk.com/p/mosh is currently on the HN frontpage as https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22810589 , and I think of that like my comment section. I have my blog pull in the comments from there: https://www.jefftk.com/p/mosh#hn-22811119 I also pull comments from LessWrong and Facebook, though the FB comment integration is pretty temperamental.

Is there a way to comment on your post if it's not been posted to Hacker News/Facebook/LessWrong?

I post everything to FB and LW. If you want to comment on HN and you think it's a post that's relevant here you could submit it?

Re: An alternative to using Google Analytics on your website

#243

Post by shortstuffsushi »

munk-a wrote: post #232
shortstuffsushi wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Genuine question, how would you find that users are struggling to find pricing using an analytics tool? How would you set that up / what would you look for to identify that? Something like scrolling around / back and forth implying they're struggling to find data or something?

A good signal would probably be dithering as you mentioned above - either scrolling back and forth through sections or navigating through different components if you website has a paged layout. Additionally, as a business, you want to make sure users are following a pretty predictable flow through some limited entry points (like homepage, FAQ, information bulletins) - then either to pricing and then additional inform…

Hmm, fair enough. This is ~what I was thinking, making inference from their flow through the site. I have seen that book on the desk of design folks I've worked with, but I've not looked through it... not a bad idea though. Thanks.

Re: An alternative to using Google Analytics on your website

#244

Post by cortesoft »

SkyMarshal wrote: post #223
cortesoft wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The blog seemed to very intentionally not mention the company's product until the very end. They should have led with that.

It's on the company's own blog under their own domain. It's not like this is a submarine article or the like. http://paulgraham.com/submarine.html

Sure, but I had no idea the company was an analytics company until the last paragraph. I clicked on the article from HN.

Re: An alternative to using Google Analytics on your website

#245

Post by brandon272 »

Some pricing feedback:

The limitation of *K views per month only serves to introduce confusion into the buying process for me:

- I don't know how many thousand views per month my website gets, to begin with. This is not something I have ever had to be concerned about but with this product, suddenly I need to keep an eye on this?

- The first question that comes to mind is that what happens when I go over? I see you have a FAQ answer dedicated to this. (A lot of people won't bother to read the FAQ)

- According to the FAQ, a one time "spike" is OK, but if it happens two months in a row someone will contact me? This seems murky and introduces uncertainty. And not sure I want to sign up for a $6/mo. product where a vendor is going to be contacting me to "discuss upgrade options".

- That said, I don't know what "discuss upgrade options" means. Does this mean you'll contact me to force me to upgrade? Or is it just a suggestion? Is there a time frame in which I'd have to do it or will you cut off the service if a decision isn't made in a timely fashion?

- Your highest plan allows 1M pageviews per month. What happens if I go over that? Is there a higher, unlisted plan that I would be asked to upgrade to?

A lot of the above may seem silly but I'm trying to illustrate the kind of murkiness that might cause a user to think, "I don't know exactly what I'm signing up for" and move on to other solutions.

Re: An alternative to using Google Analytics on your website

#246

Post by saagarjha »

jefftk wrote: post #242
saagarjha wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there a way to comment on your post if it's not been posted to Hacker News/Facebook/LessWrong?

I post everything to FB and LW. If you want to comment on HN and you think it's a post that's relevant here you could submit it?

I don't submit things to Hacker News :(

Re: An alternative to using Google Analytics on your website

#247

Post by tanderson92 »

lmkg wrote: post #178
tanderson92 wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Analytics can absolutely be useful for your personal blog / website. Imagine you're an academic on the postdoctoral fellow / tenure track job market and you want to both numbers and see locations of where your hits are coming from, google analytics can help. For universities the ISP entry is often "X university" which makes things even clear than the broad Geo category of which city the hit comes from. This can be ve…

> For universities the ISP entry is often "X university" Actually Google killed that report earlier this year. It's kind of a big deal, a lot of companies were using ISP dimension to distinguish external vs employee traffic.

Yes, but there are hacks to get that back: I have been using https://ipmeta.io/ with success.

Re: An alternative to using Google Analytics on your website

#248

Post by tanderson92 »

Etheryte wrote: post #63
tanderson92 wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Analytics can absolutely be useful for your personal blog / website. Imagine you're an academic on the postdoctoral fellow / tenure track job market and you want to both numbers and see locations of where your hits are coming from, google analytics can help. For universities the ISP entry is often "X university" which makes things even clear than the broad Geo category of which city the hit comes from. This can be ve…

What is the created value from that data extraction, though? That you know that the uni you applied to looked at your website? That's nice, but again, simply a way to reinforce your ego as far as I see — you get insurance that you're important enough to get through the first filter. But what actionable data does this interaction give you?

The academic job market can be unforgiving, and for those who also have industry leads/offers it can be helpful to know whether there may be future offers from academic institutions when deciding whether to commit elsewhere. Even without industry offers, it isn't like all academic job offers come in at the same time and you may be second pick at your preferred institution so it could take some time for a possible offer to come through. If you're still getting website hits from a place it's a fair bet you're still under consideration and you maybe don't want to commit elsewhere.

It's not really about an ego boost, and in any case, egos can take a pretty major bruising during the very anxious weeks.

Re: An alternative to using Google Analytics on your website

#249

Post by owenshen24 »

tmikaeld wrote: post #22

Some open source alternatives: - https://ackee.electerious.com/ (Node.js based) - https://github.com/zgoat/goatcounter (Golang) (Commercial Licensed) - https://snowplowanalytics.com (Core-ware) - https://count.ly (Core-ware) https://www.visitor-analytics.io is also a great GDPR compliant alternative (Not open source).

Shout-out to GoatCounter which was both free and easy for me to set up for my blog.
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