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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

#171

Post by sachinag »

pindi wrote: post #161
DodgyEggplant wrote: post #12

Poor man's analytics: events, client side, server side, whatever. Set up a separate DB with one big table, many columns for properties. One server call to write an event (a row), one ajax call to write from the client, throw it wherever you need. A bit of good old simple SQL for queries and reporting, and you are done.

I have a system exactly like this at my company, with a prettier UI on top of the SQL querying. I've been considering open sourcing it for a while; I wonder if there really is a demand for this, or if it's one of those things that everyone prefers to roll themselves.

Nothing wrong with putting it out there and no uptake. At least you won't have pull requests to deal with.

But, seriously, everyone rolls this themselves and does it wrong. If you've done it right, and can release it, you'd be doing good for the world.

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

#172

Post by anonfunction »

stdbrouw wrote: post #163
anonfunction wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a site owner you could easily only attach the JS snippet to people who have logged in.

But then you can't do conversion analysis anymore.

Your right, but like everything else there are pros and cons and tradeoffs that should be considered.

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

#173

Post by saosebastiao »

foobarqux wrote: post #141
saosebastiao wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not just false positives in a confirm/deny scenario. It can also lead to overfitting in a modeling scenario. I once created a model that showed very strongly that US/China exchange rates were a driver of revenue. This model was intuitive based on the market dynamics as we understood them, and they helped provide a strong predictive power which helped reduce operational costs. Over time, this model began to be taken a…

What was the actual underlying correlation?

Inflation...specifically using an industrial goods index.

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

#174

Post by cheald »

huhtenberg wrote: post #165
cheald wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That "purpose" is generally to help service providers understand you better so that they can provide a product that better serves your wants and needs, as their customer.

Say, you have a desktop client-server app. Outlook, for example. How would you feel if it were uploading every click on the menu and every mouse move (in the confines of its window, of course) to the server. Strictly to help the developer improve the product and make it better for you , their customer. This should be totally OK with you, right?

You mean like Eclipse does? http://www.eclipse.org/epp/usagedata/

Yes, if the product is collecting usage information (which does not include personal information) to help the software vendor improve the product, I have no problem with it. I like using good software. It's particularly potent in the context of web software, because you can A/B test and rapidly adapt the product to signals from your analytics packages in order to make sure that you are providing the most usable, most user-friendly product possible to them.

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

#175

Post by icelancer »

anonfunction wrote: post #172
stdbrouw wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But then you can't do conversion analysis anymore.

Your right, but like everything else there are pros and cons and tradeoffs that should be considered.

Lacking conversion analysis is not a "con." It is a mandatory feature in something like this.

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

#176

Post by ianstormtaylor »

Hovertruck wrote: post #140
eksith wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not your imagination. For Heap, it would be a bit unwise to ignore IE A lot of new projects on the front page lately don't work on IE9 either. I lost count of the number of shiny new things (usually involving HTML5) that just show a plain black (/white/gray/blue etc...) screen on IE9 and I'd need to fire up Firefox or Chrome just to look at it. To be fair, not all of these are catering to IE based browsers (and…

I can speak to this a little bit, actually. Chartbeat has never supported IE, which as you say sounds like cutting off a major part of your market. Even moreso when you consider our customers which include pretty much every major publisher in the US. However what we've learned is that if your product provides enough value, people have no problem installing Chrome or Firefox or whatever. To this day we receive pretty…

+1 to this.

Also people need to realize that client-side library support is different from what the product's website itself supports. Chartbeat, and every analytics provider I know of supports IE for their tracking library.

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

#177

Post by orangethirty »

Samuel_Michon wrote: post #159
orangethirty wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is one of the highest converting messages you can put on a button.

I think that depends on what kind of conversion you're after. If you just want to harvest email addresses, then sure. If you're looking for satisfied paying customers, this kind of trickery won't work. If you build a button that promises something for free, you need to give something for free — free tier, 30 day trial, ebook, screencast, etc. Having visitors fill out an account form is not a gift to them, it's a gift…

The issue here is that I'm sharing findings from my own data. This is not me making stuff up. I have actually used this very same button text to increase conversions (up by .04% on a site with thousands of visitors). It was not used to harvest emails. A practice that simply does not work, unless you plan on sending Viagra ads. I don't do such things.

If you build a button that promises something for free, you need to give something for free — free tier, 30 day trial, ebook, screencast, etc. Having visitors fill out an account form is not a gift to them, it's a gift to YOU.

See, this is where you miss the point. The person is getting a free account. You might not think its something, but there are a lot of accounts out there for which you have to pay. Need to go to Costco? Hey, you have to pay for membership (an account), just to make sure you can enter the store. Free accounts may not be what they used to be (in your opinion), but they are still very valuable overall.

Now, of course you are not going to just give them an account. That would be a waste of a good lead. You will then follow up with another offer. Say, pay half-off your service price for the first month. And so on.

I know some of this stuff looks rather strange to people here. But the business world is very, very different from programming.

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

#178

Post by [deleted] »

Samuel_Michon wrote: post #159
orangethirty wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is one of the highest converting messages you can put on a button.

I think that depends on what kind of conversion you're after. If you just want to harvest email addresses, then sure. If you're looking for satisfied paying customers, this kind of trickery won't work. If you build a button that promises something for free, you need to give something for free — free tier, 30 day trial, ebook, screencast, etc. Having visitors fill out an account form is not a gift to them, it's a gift…

[deleted]

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

#179

Post by [deleted] »

Samuel_Michon wrote: post #159
orangethirty wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is one of the highest converting messages you can put on a button.

I think that depends on what kind of conversion you're after. If you just want to harvest email addresses, then sure. If you're looking for satisfied paying customers, this kind of trickery won't work. If you build a button that promises something for free, you need to give something for free — free tier, 30 day trial, ebook, screencast, etc. Having visitors fill out an account form is not a gift to them, it's a gift…

[deleted]

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

#180

Post by [deleted] »

Samuel_Michon wrote: post #159
orangethirty wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is one of the highest converting messages you can put on a button.

I think that depends on what kind of conversion you're after. If you just want to harvest email addresses, then sure. If you're looking for satisfied paying customers, this kind of trickery won't work. If you build a button that promises something for free, you need to give something for free — free tier, 30 day trial, ebook, screencast, etc. Having visitors fill out an account form is not a gift to them, it's a gift…

[deleted]
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