- Is Google Analytics still the best tool
that you can use on your website in 2018?
Well, let's find out.
(upbeat music)
Hey there and welcome back
to another video of measureschool.com
teaching you the data-driven way
of digital marketing.
My name is Julian and today
we wanna talk about Google Analytics
and if it's still the best analytics tool out there
that you can use for your website tracking in 2018.
Now, it's definitely very popular.
I actually use it religiously
and I have many clients running on Google Analytics
but there are certain circumstances
where I would recommend a different tool.
Now, what are the advantages and disadvantages
of this number one analytics tool out there?
Let's dive into some of the pro and cons.
So, the number one or that everybody can think of
when they think of Google Analytics
is that it's free.
Now, Google Analytics came out with a free version
after they bought a company called Urchin
and made that website data available
to their advertisers of AdWords
so they can make better decisions on changing
around their website and convert more people
and spend more money on advertising
but the tool was really powerful already
at the beginning, so it widely spread
all over the world
and is now one of the most used analytics systems
out there for website tracking.
That obviously brings a lot of perks to the system.
It is gathering a lot of data,
it has huge support out there,
so if you have any question,
you can go into one of the forums
and find out what you can do about your problem
and since it's connected to AdWords
and that is Google's money maker still
they actually invest
into the tool on a continuous basis
so there are always new features coming out
which is also great
but on the con side
the free model is not the holy grail
and that's what Google actually also discovered
and they brought out a paid version
of Google Analytics in their marketing suite Google 360.
You can pay everything from $20,000 a month upwards
to actually get better and more data
into your analytics system
but also the other systems
that they have out there
and really get better data here.
So, up to a certain level,
Google Analytics is free
but once you get more sophisticated,
especially the sampling issue
that you have in the free version is pretty annoying,
then you might need to think about different systems
that are out there
and Google Analytics is just one of the many paid systems
that you can install on your website
and get click stream data from.
Now, on the pro side
it is pretty feature rich.
Now, you need to think
that the system Urchin was actually a paid product before
and then Google brought it out
continuously evolved it,
so it has a lot, a lot of features
that you can implement and customize
in your Google Analytics installation
and that's a good thing, right?
Well, only kind of
because on the con side,
Google Analytics gives you a very strict model
on how to look at the data.
Now, this is mainly based on their model
of page view data,
so when we think back 10 years,
analytics and websites were not that complex
and therefore Google Analytics
built on that model of page views
and sessions and users
and they calculate a lot through that.
That brought in a lot of problems as well
because we had a lot of privacy issues,
we have different features
that we should be able to track
and to use but we can't connect that to data,
the data is stored in the US
so it's under US privacy laws.
That's what the Europeans don't really like
and that's why you can't send
any personal identifiable information
into Google Analytics which is not really suited
to our business model.
So, yes, Google Analytics has a lot of features
but maybe you are better off
with a different tool
that gives you more specialized data
that can connect to your business model better
and give you better data
and more meaningful data
for your business and it's maybe possible
to build it into Google Analytics
but not the best way to look at that data later on.
So, be aware of these limitations
once you start customizing your installation
which brings us to our next point,
the plus side, Google Analytics is customizable,
so it's not just out of the box
although you can use it out of the box
and just track page views
which is not worth much anymore
but you can customize a lot,
so from event tracking
to actually sending user IDs
or custom dimensions, custom metrics,
you can really spice up your tracking
and transfer the requirements
of your business model
to this tool as well.
Now, on the con side here
again we have more specialized tools
that might be able to track your business better.
In that sense we might have different business models
with mobile apps or gaming
that might be suited for a different tool
a little bit better or if you need to have
very deep insights about your customers' behavior
because they log into your system,
maybe Google Analytics is not the right tool
because it makes it really hard
to connect that data back and forth
with personal identifiable information
because they're not allowed to send that in.
So, different other tools
like Mixpanel or Kissmetrics
have a different model in the background
and are specialized on these different customizations
that you can do on the tool.
So, keep that in mind,
once you try to transfer your business model
to your tracking model,
and try to input that into Google Analytics
and customize it.
And last but not least, the connections.
Now, on the plus side,
Google Analytics is well connected.
We get information automatically from AdWords,
we can send it to Google Data Studio,
we have Google Tag Manager available,
so well-connected tool.
Also, on the third-party front
we have different other tools
like super metrics
that let us pull the data right into Google Sheets
or different plugins on the WordPress side
that let us install Google Analytics really easily.
It's wildly used
and therefore it has very many connections out there
to actually pull data in, pull data out
and connect Google Analytics to different systems
but on the negative side,
we actually don't get access
to the raw data.
Now, in essence, Google Analytics
just takes up our data
and puts it into a bucket of page views
and that data is very valuable
if you wanted to connect it to different other tools
or wanted to do deeper analysis
on this raw data
but Google Analytics by default
at least in the free version
doesn't give us this data,
so other systems might be more useful in that sense
if you think about Snowplow analytics
that let's you build your own data service
and when it comes to privacy reasons
obviously you also want to keep your data
on your own servers
and that's simply something
that Google Analytics doesn't give you
once you have the free version of Google Analytics.
So, in conclusion is Google Analytics
still the tool that you should be using in 2018
for your website tracking?
Now, it depends.
In the end, if you are heavily into customization
and really want to have a business impact
with your analytics,
then you probably have the manpower
and team and resources out there
to actually search for a better solution
of Google Analytics out there.
If you're not yet at that stage
where you really want to make an impact
with your analytics
and just need standard tracking data
to optimize your marketing campaigns,
then Google Analytics is still
one of the tools out there
that is well supported, that is free
and it gives you standardized data
that a lot of the marketers out there understand,
so I would still install it
on our website
but also look out for other tools
that may make my analytics implementation
a bit more customizable,
so if I think about heat map tracking,
video tracking
or simply data that I can send
to different other marketing tools
so I can make it really actionable
that might be for example Facebook analytics
and the Facebook Pixel,
then I really want to stress
that you don't just have to Google Analytics.
It gives you some base tracking data
but see what other questions,
what other data
you can get from other analytics systems,
maybe try them out
and put them onto your website as well.
And that's already it with this week's video.
If you have any questions about this
or anything was missing
or if you see any kind of new advantages or cons
that I have missed, then I'd love to hear from you.
Please leave that in the comments below
and if you haven't yet, then consider subscribing
to our channel right over
because we'll bring you new video
just like this one every week.
Now, my name is Julian,
til next time.