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Show HN: Heap is a new approach to analytics. Just capture everything

heapanalytics.com

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Re: Show HN: Heap is a new approach to analytics. Just capture everything

#21

Post by matm »

raylu wrote: post #16
matm wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's essentially imperceptible. We measured it, and our client-side script introduces a 0.1% CPU overhead.

I don't think anyone is concerned about the CPU overhead. (Also, let's not talk about measuring things without defining exactly what was measured. On a blank page I'm sure your JS runs great.) How does it affect network performance? If I click a link and it takes me to another page, how do you track that?

Good point. In terms of network performance, we try to batch events and minimize server requests.

For link tracking, our method is similar to how other analytics products track link clicks - we delay the page navigation the min of: 1) 250ms, 2) the time it takes for our server to respond to a click event.

Re: Show HN: Heap is a new approach to analytics. Just capture everything

#22

Post by mbell »

codegeek wrote: post #10

The demo page ( https://heapanalytics.com/dashboard/demo ) fails in IE8. Is it just me or IE8 is just not considered by web startups anymore ? Sorry to deviate a little but every time I try to look at a "Show HN" in IE8 (work computer), it fails for about 85% of the time. I could understand that some startups heavily depend on latest browsers but what about others ?

IE8 is a complete mess in comparison to modern browsers. To support IE8 you often have to go through a lot of extra work after the site works in modern browsers to get it functional even if your not doing something particularly complex. At the very least its often a whole bunch of different CSS / replacing CSS with images to get the rendering to look decent. In addition a lot of 'Show HN' posts tend to use 'cool new tech' that just doesn't work at all in IE8. To get it functional you often have to implement an entirely different approach just for IE8. Most 'Show HN' links are MVP products, the devs just decided to release quick instead of spending a few extra weeks dealing with IE8's shenanigans.

Re: Show HN: Heap is a new approach to analytics. Just capture everything

#25

Post by scott_karana »

codegeek wrote: post #10

The demo page ( https://heapanalytics.com/dashboard/demo ) fails in IE8. Is it just me or IE8 is just not considered by web startups anymore ? Sorry to deviate a little but every time I try to look at a "Show HN" in IE8 (work computer), it fails for about 85% of the time. I could understand that some startups heavily depend on latest browsers but what about others ?

Everyone, not just web startups, is sick of IE8 and earlier. As the other commenter described, it's a lot of effort. I think when it comes to bigger organizations (such as Google not officially support IE8 anymore), it's to force laggard corporate offices to at least upgrade to IE9, if not Chrome or Firefox.

Re: Show HN: Heap is a new approach to analytics. Just capture everything

#28

Post by raviparikh »

acgourley wrote: post #6

I'm positive there is a market for it. Unfortunately "capturing everything" has an unsolvable problem beyond capture performance, storage cost and query performance (which are hard but solvable) - it let's you find the outcome you were looking for all along.

This is a really good point - blind data analysis without any notion of multiple hypothesis testing leads to false positives. This XKCD is a great illustration of that: http://xkcd.com/882/

This is something we're thinking about and are definitely conscious of.

Re: Show HN: Heap is a new approach to analytics. Just capture everything

#29

Post by soneca »

I liked it very much as a non-tech founder that is not quite sure how to define some events on KissMetrics and regret not having qualified a particular form of sign up as an event before.

Comparing prices though, a question: is every visitor of my site a new "user" for you? If it so, then my monthly average events for user would be very low, then an "event based" pricing would be better for me than a "user based" pricing. Comparing prices with KissMetrics, my guess is KM would be cheaper for me with an average of 3 events per visitor. But if your "user" entity doesn't consider, at least, the ones that bounced, then maybe is a good deal.

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