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What analytics tool(s) are you currently using?

For my current project iconsizer I decided to use Google Analytics because it is the most popular and it was easy for me to implement. Something that I do not like about Google Analytics is that I have to wait 24 hours for my daily report to show fully.

What analytics tool(s) are you using and why?

  1. 4

    I still prefer using Google Analytics as it is a master tool on analytics but it has a lot of things that an India Hacker won't require, hence I built and a layer over it, shanc

    Create a Project on Google Analytics and then link your account to shanc, A dashboard that is easier to understand. Also, get those KPIs sent over to your email on a weekly basis.

    We are working on bringing more power tools to the users

  2. 3

    A did some research not too long ago and came to the following conclusions.

    First, I find the tools typically fall under either marketing analytics or product analytics. I tend to consider Google analytics to be a "marketing analytics" tool. It's great for analyzing and optimizing your marketing channels and conversion funnel.

    However, once users are members of your product/app (if you have one), then product analytics tool are generally better geared for this analysis and collection of data.

    For Marketing analytics, Google Analytics does a pretty good job, though it can be a bit complex for simple needs. Plausible is a nice/simpler experience if you don't mind spending money for it.

    On the product analytics side, I found amplitude to be the best tool for the job. They have a free tier of 10,000,000 events per month. The free tier doesn't have all the reports and features, but it's still a really nice package for free. You'll likely have some decent traction before exceeding 10mm per month.

    So for my apps.

    1. 1

      Thanks for the insight 😀

  3. 3

    https://usefathom.com for simplicity. I am kind of intrigued by https://splitbee.io/ because of their A/B testing abilities and slightly more feature richness, without sacrificing clear UI on the stats (actually both tools seem to have the same UI)

    1. 2

      Will check them out :)

    2. 1

      Thanks for recommending Splitbee! :)
      Yes, we try to keep things as simple as possible but still provide a rich feature set. A/B testing, funnels, user explorer + (customer messaging soon)

  4. 2

    I do analytics full-time at high scale for a day job. Here's my stack:

    GA and Mixpanel, fed by Segment.

    GA meets some use cases, and Mixpanel others. GA covers the aggregate stuff high-level KPIs. Mixpanel is great for when you want to dive deeper and see individual users' behavior (especially after signup). Segment lets you implement once and see data in many places.

    Unfortunately, waiting through today to see a full day's report is a fact of life (or rather, a matter of the laws of physics). In the day job I often recommend people not look at "today's" data because it's incomplete.

    Also, if you're at small scale, you shouldn't look at day-on-day data anyway. That's because a variance of 50 visitors to 60 may feel like a big 20% jump! But really both values are just within the margin of error.

    If your analytics needs a little more structure, you might want my book, Analytics for Indies: https://signup.analyticsforindies.com

    1. 1

      Thanks for the info 😀

  5. 2

    On consentry.org, we use Google Analytics if/after people consent, and Plausible (IH made!) for otherwise.

    1. 1

      Thanks for sharing Justin (and for using Plausible)! That's a beautiful integration of the privacy law consent prompt (and an interesting Plausible use case)! And love that it's a proper legal implementation too.

      Would you mind sharing some usage stats such as how many ignore the prompt, how many accept/deny and how many change settings?

      1. 1

        Thanks, Marko! It's a little unfair to share ours specifically, since people are incentivised to interact with our widget since it's also our product demo, but shoot me an email at [email protected], I'd love to chat.

        1. 1

          makes sense, thanks! will reach out!

          1. 1

            Hey guys. I have questions for both of you so let me continue this thread.

            I'm building a WP plugin for integrating WP with multiple web-analytics platforms and systems that do tracking "by-chance" (like Klaviyo for example) and I was thinking about including Plausible integration too.

            Guys, have any of you tried measuring with plausible how many people have adblocks? Is it blocked by adblockers?

            Also, how do the visit numbers stack up between GAnalytics and Plausible? GA should be much more often blocked by script blockers.

            Third, what about blockers in Brave browser? Any experience with that?

            1. 1

              Thanks Kris, sounds like an interesting plugin idea. It's really difficult to say. It really depends on the audience. For more tech savvy audiences such as those who use Firefox and Brave, it wouldn't be a surprise to see 50% or more of traffic being blocked while it is lower for more mainstream audiences such as those on Chrome or those without adblockers.

  6. 2

    I had the same considerations so I started with the server side analytics on Netlify, where my site/blog is hosted. A week ago I found a JavaScript library by a fellow indie hacker, called Plausible Analytics and I really like how it works! It is a very small js file, without using cookies and very privacy oriented. There are some tradeoffs between server and client side analytics which I will write a bit more soon.

    1. 2

      Thanks for sharing (and using) Plausible Analytics Vladimir! Appreciate it!

      We're working on making our script even lighter and that should hopefully go live by next week. We're on 1.4 KB with the current script and hoping to go even lighter :)

      And I'm looking forward to reading your post about server vs client side analytics!

      1. 2

        I wrote a bit about my experience with server vs. client side analytics here: https://twitter.com/haltakov/status/1265381929274298369?s=20

        1. 1

          Great comparison, thanks for sharing!

      2. 2

        I have seen a few people talk about Plausible Analytics. I will definitely look into it :)

  7. 2

    I'm using (and building!) Metrical.xyz, a Google Analytics alternative that doesn't use cookies and is focusing on user privacy.

    In the last years I grow tired to use Google Analytics for the way it sucks dry lots of user data that I would never use it in my reports and will instead give Google a better perspective of the navigation habits of my visitors, so I created my own web analytics platform... and it turned out really well! 🚀

    It's currently in beta but everyone can try it for free for the moment.

    1. 1

      I wish you good luck with your project, keep up the good work :)

  8. 2

    I just set up Matomo because I wanted something fully under my control. I've been using it on a few sites, and so far it's been good. I don't do anything too advanced with tracking, mainly just watch page views.

    The only other option I've considered is Fathom, which looks great. I can't speak to how either of them are with daily reports or anything, unfortunately.

  9. 1

    For my SaaS product Sigmetic I use Amplitude.
    I find Google Analytics slow, not always reliable and really hard to customize.
    You can get into Google Data Studio, but it's time consuming and complicated.

    Amplitude really makes it easy to create new metrics, and visualize it how you want.
    Intuitive and easy to use, you barely have to read docs for anything.

    As an addition, I use Segment, because it's easier to swap and add services if I need.
    That's definitely my recommendation 👍

    1. 2

      I will check them out :) Also the design for Sigmetic looks very good 👍

  10. 1

    Google Analytics and trying out FullStory.

    Analytics is ridiculously powerful for a free product.

    1. 1

      I will check it out. Also totally agree with you here.

  11. 1

    Google Analytics + https://everview.app and a bunch of custom API endpoints measuring different things.

    1. 1

      Thanks for the info! I see that everview is your product. The free guide pop up hides the start free button and also the background on top of the page takes some time to load so I cannot see the words. Maybe it needs to be compressed or something 😉👍

      1. 1

        Thank you for the feedback 🙏🏻

  12. 1

    Hi there Bojidar!

    I've got to tell you that this post and the discussion below got me to finally register to Indie Hackers :)

    Currently I'm working on a WP plugin for integrating multiple tracking and web-analytics solutions with WP, so I think I can add valuable info to the discussion.

    First of all, for majority of people Google Analytics is NOT great. In fact, it is terrible, but if you know what you are doing you can MAKE it great.

    Let me explain.

    GA is an old platform that was getting a LOT of updates throughout the years. But the system had also many flaws that were NOT fixed in order not to break people's data. This is seen in the way page on time is calculated (it can now be fixed but GA nor GTM have no such in-built feature), how different reports name the same data differently, how conversion attribution works in all reports but one, how social media traffic is represented in reports, how default channel grouping is immmensely flawed, etc. etc.

    To sum up, the data you get by default in GA is in my opinion worthless. You need a lot of work to get correct data.

    If you plan on running your site on WP and using GA plugin, than you will be in that situation. From my researchn at the moment there is not a single WP plugin that helps you correct any of the GA flaws. Not even such basic ones like tracking clicks with the middle mouse button or triggering tags when a tab with a page is actually visible!

    This is actually one of the reasons I am making a WP plugin for integrating multiple tracking & web-analytics systems with WP. At the moment I am working on GA, and the number of fixes I had to implement is pretty big.

    I don't like the fact that GA got so popular among people who don't know how to use it. Many consider it as the default tracking tool and a godsend, but in fact it will do them more harm than good.

    On the other hand I am really sad when I see how other web-analytics tools that have a lot of potential are not getting the attention they deserve. That is why, as soon as I finish with integrating the popular solutions (GA, FB pixel and GTM) I will go with the less popular solutions and - hopefully - bring them to people's attention.

    Oh, and going back to your case, try several tracking solutions. Try heatmaps too. Even though I haven't yet started implementing it, matomo seems promising, maybe Yandex Metrica, woopra free, hotjar. AS for plausible and fathom... hmmm... maybe. I don't know much about them but as far as I know they give basic tracking info that may be too little for you. But definitely, don't go with any A/B testing solutions. It is a common mistake to start using them when your traffic is minimal. You need AT LEAST a few thousands conversions a month to get any reliable data.

    I hope I helped :)

    1. 1

      Thanks a lot! I am glad you registered. I was a lurker for months (till last week) and I have to say that IH is probably the best community for people like us. I hope you enjoy your time here :)

      I am not using WP but your plugin has a lot of value. As I said I am using GA because it is very easy to implement and it is the most popular. But I made this discussion to see what other people are using which also helps people see more unpopular options.

      Currently the only metrics I need are visitors, time spent, and maybe where they came from. For A/B testing as you said it is worthless when you do not have a big enough user base.

  13. 1

    I think for this moment Google Analytics is the best and full tool even if you need to wait 24 hours. And as I know, not 24 hours, it updates every 6 hours. Also, you can use real-time report :)

    1. 1

      You are right. But right now it says I had 0 users while the graph says another story. So it properly displays the information right at 12 AM. Also real time report displays information in the last 30 minutes. If I am doing something wrong please correct me :)

  14. 1

    Netlify. Is server side. No need to track users.

  15. 1

    As I'm the maker of Indiemetrics, I use it (no surprise I know).

  16. 1

    I'm using Fathom Analytics for my project Letterbase.

    It's great because the report updates in real-time (so no waiting for 24 hours for the daily report), it's super simple to use, and they offer a weekly email so you're always up to speed on everything that's going on.

    Downside is that they use a bar graph instead of a more reasonable line chart, but that's something that they said they would be improving soon!

    1. 0

      I saw Fathom Analytics a couple of times. But most people who are just starting out like me don't like spending money on analytics this early on. That is my opinion tho 😀

      1. 1

        True! In that case Google Analytics is probably your best bet, especially if you're still validating your idea and finding initial users.

  17. 0

    my own analytic system that ive built :)

  18. 0

    Do you try Adobe Launch(https://www.adobe.com/experience-platform/launch.html), great tagging tools from Adobe?

  19. 0

    Plausible for sure!
    Made by our friends IndieHackers 🙋🏽‍♂️

    It has cheap starter paid plan, and you can also self-host it.

    Besides that, it is really focused on visitors' privacy and GDPR. Doesn't use cookies to track users. Give it a try 🙌

    Here's their public analytics page: https://plausible.io/plausible.io 👀

    #edit
    It's also open sourced.

    Cheers! ✨

      1. 2

        Nema na čemu, prijavljujem ja i bugove 😁 Koristim Pl još od početka, kida.

  20. 0

    I built my own, its called Privalytics.io. Right now it's closed for new sign ups, until I decide in which direction I try to make it grow. In any case, it is Open Source in case you want to tinker with it.

    I just built it because I didn't want to pay 4 or 5 times what I pay for hosting just to have a plot of visitors

  21. 0

    I used both https://clicky.com/ and https://simpleanalytics.com/.

    I love Simple Analytics by @adriaanvanrossum because it gives me a quick overview of my traffic and helps me quickly spot sudden traffic spikes and drops.

    And I love Clicky because it shows me how my readers interact with my site. I can see what page they visit before siging up for my newsletter. Or how many days it takes for them to go from discovering the blog to buying a product.

    1. 1

      Thanks! I will check them out :)

  22. 0

    I'm using Ackee:

    Why:

    1. It's focused on privacy. I want to know the stats but I don't need to spy on my users
    2. It's open-source. I like the option to see how it works and add anything I need
    3. Has a nice and clean interface. Sure GA has many options but I don't need 99% of them. Ackee shows me everything I need

    There's no hosted Ackee, but you can spin it up with one click on Heroku (I believe the free worker should be enough).

    Also, it has nice integrations with Gatsby, WordPress, React and Django.

    1. 2

      The UI really looks simple. That is a big advantage 🤔

  23. 1

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