Unpopular Opinion: You don't need Google Analytics ๐ โโ๏ธ๐คฎ
Mariano Martene
6 replies
Here is why:
โ It's hard to understand and use
GA has a steep learning curve, which can be overwhelming for beginners or small businesses.
Be a good marketer โ use your time wisely.
โ Limited data sampling
The free version of Google Analytics uses data sampling, which may not provide accurate insights for high-traffic websites.
โ Data ownership
Google retains control over your data, which can concern businesses with sensitive information, especially if you're a big company!
โ Itโs a bloated script that affects your site speed
โ Itโs a liability considering GDPR, CCPA and other privacy regulations.
โ Itโs blocked by many plugins (adBlocks) and browsers, so the data is not accurate.
Instead, do this โคต๏ธ
โ
Use Search Console for data on search engine visibility.
โ
If you're worried about attribution, Ask your customers:
โ โ๐๐ฉ๐ฆ๐ณ๐ฆ ๐ฅ๐ช๐ฅ ๐บ๐ฐ๐ถ ๐ฉ๐ฆ๐ข๐ณ ๐ข๐ฃ๐ฐ๐ถ๐ต ๐ถ๐ด?โ
You can do this in their onboarding journey.
Don't make it a multiple-choice survey.
Let them answer in a free-form text field.
โ
Use a different solution for your SaaS product.
GA doesn't work for product analytics. Many SaaS CEOs fail to understand this.
Web analytics โ product analytics.
๐ต Use ๐ณ๐ฟ๐ฒ๐ฒ alternatives. Here are some of them:
1๏ธโฃ Cloudflare: It's great but quite basic. I use this, plus you get all their DNS benefits (speed, cache, security, etc).
2๏ธโฃ Plausible: It has a paid version but also a self-hosted open-source (free).
3๏ธโฃ Matomo (formally Piwik). Privacy first analytics. It's self-hosted, but the level of data you get from it is probably going to be the most detailed in comparison to GA.
4๏ธโฃ Umami.is: self-hosted. But it is one of the most simple and lightweight you'll find.
There are a few more options, but honestly, I haven't tried them.
What tools are you currently using for your analytics?
Replies
Eden@entreeden
Thinksy
I find GA valuable for landing pages and things that don't have customer data. Makes it easy for me to understand if there's actually traffic and keep track of when my ads are working to drive people to the site.
But I agree outside of that I prefer something like Matomo when it starts to concern customer data or actually interacting past a landing page
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This is not a discussion question, more of an opinion piece. I'd recommend you make a blog post about it instead.
SaaS Events 2023
@anees_iqbal Will do like that :). Thank you!
SaaS Events 2023
@anees_iqbal You're right. I should have formulated in question format to sparkle a discussion. I will do it next time. Thanks for the feedback
@marianomartene I appreciate the openness to feedback. You could do it the stockoverflow way, ask the feedback question and post your own opinion piece as a comment instead of making it part of the question.
Good luck!