Mon 28 Aug 2006
Google Analytics Review
Posted by admin under Uncategorized, Reviews, Blog
Google Analytics has some unique features and is easy to install, learn and use.
Google Analytics even goes so far as to list keyword effectiveness by time of day (dayparting) and suggests keywords to buy. Content Optimization reports contain information on advertising effectiveness, top pages, navigational analysis, conversion funnels and technical statistics such as browser versions and screen resolutions.
In my opinion, G-A’s biggest weakness is that they do not offer the level of professional support required for most companies.
Pro's
- It's free
- Easy installation
- Allows up to 10 website profiles
- Over 80 reports available
- Permissions based access manager
- Custom report filters
- Site overlay
- Unique visitor tracking via JavaScript and cookies
- Goal/Conversion tracking
- Visitor loyalty and recency reporting
- Assorted visitor segmenting
- Campaign ROI
- Easy AdWords integration
- A/B testing
- Funnel reporting
- Site-Search reporting
September 7th, 2006 at 10:00 am
Google Analytics is a great tool, but it definitely has a few pitfalls. I am not so much worried about the support, but I would like to have something on our in-house server. Having to make a call for the urchin.js can sometimes slow a site down, as well as a browser without javascript is eliminated from the stats all together. So, there may be a small amount of visitors who are not being logged. It would be much nicer attached to the server side, and possibly work in conjuction with the server logs.
Personally, I think custom is the best way to go. This way, you can target and track just what you need without having to dig and find things. Also, custom eliminates some of the overhead of unnecessary code or calls.
Overall, for the reasons you listed above, I think it is a great tool - but there are other options out there. I think this should be used in conjuction with other analytic tools.