In
addition to Google Analytics (GA), there are a variety of free web analytics
tools available. Some companies that offer free analytics tools are GoingUp,
Piwik, Reinvigorate, and Woopra. Most of the free versions of these services offer
limited reports and metrics, and the companies charge for more robust versions
(Demers, 2013). Of the alternative analytics tools mentioned, Piwik Web
Analytics is comparable to GA.
Piwik
is a free open-source analytics tool. It was developed in 2008 and is used by
over 480,000 websites. Piwik offers robust features and tools that provide
details on par with GA (Qayyum, 2013). Open-source software and projects are
collaborative and open for the public to develop and change. The software’s original
team of developers provide the software and licensing rights free to everyone
(Opensource.com, n.d.).
Piwik
provides a lot of the same standard reports GA does, such as traffic referrals,
keywords, new/unique/return visitors, content, browser type, device type,
visitor flow, etc. These reports give a company the solid fundamental
data and information to
make insightful marketing, sales, and business decisions. They also provide
useful data points that enable a company to measure and track the website
performance and marketing or ad campaign results.
To
provide a company with more information and detailed data points, Piwik has
more robust features included in its free web analytics tool. These features
include real-time analytics, customizable dashboards and widgets, e-commerce
analytics, site search analytics, and transactional analytics.
Piwik’s
real-time analytics reports provide data for any date range including “today”
or “current month.” with up-to-date
analytics that include the most recent visits. These reports are updated every
10 seconds. By using these reports along with Piwik’s “Live! Widget” displays, a
company can get a sense of the real-time flow of visitors on its site. It shows
a real-time counter for page views, visits, and number of actions performed by
the visitor, and it refreshes every five seconds (Qayyum, 2013). This constant
refresh is very useful for a site with heavy traffic and time-sensitive
promotions or activities.
Piwik
allows each user to customize the dashboard and widgets to present readily the metrics
the user considers most important as well as the details of data specific to
the user’s needs. The layout of the dashboard is customizable as well. This customizability
allows the information to be displayed and organized in a way that’s most
digestible to the user (Taylor, 2014).
Piwik
has a surprising strong e-commerce analytics feature. With this feature a
company can track customer interactions, order and cart updates, product views,
and category page views. The e-commerce analytics feature allows a company to
generate reports with various sales information, such as total revenue, average
order value, conversion rate, purchased products, and abandoned carts metrics.
Additionally, a company can get a report of top products sold, product revenue,
purchase quantities, etc. The e-commerce analytics feature also allows the
company to sort information by product name, product SKU (Stock Keeping Unit),
or product category (Qayyum, 2013).
To
access and get information on the go, Piwik provides a mobile app. The
mobile app is available for iOS and Android tablets and phones. The mobile app looks similar to
the web version and has good functionality (Piwik, n.d.).
A nifty
feature of Piwik is its site search analytics. Site search gives a company
insight and details about how visitors are using the website’s internal search
engine. The site search report will tell a company what keywords visitors use
on its website’s internal search and what pages or content visitors go to after
their search. Also, the report provides the company with the keywords that delivered
no results (Piwik, n.d.). These pieces of information help a company understand
what content, items, information, or products visitors are coming to the site
to find but cannot find.
A
feature unique to Piwik is transition analytics. This feature allows a company
to see and evaluate actions taken by a visitor right before or after viewing a
specific page. It works similar to a visitor flow report, the difference being that
transition analytics can be pulled up while within other reports. For example,
if a user is in an e-commerce report, he or she can click the transition
analytics icon next to the entries/items listed to see what the visitors were
doing before and after that action. These results display like the visitor flow
(Piwik, n.d.). Here is a screen shot of the
transition analytics report.
transition analytics report.
There
are some areas in which GA is a little stronger than Piwik (e.g. customer
support). Piwik is an open-source project; it relies on software developers’
free contributions and donations from company sponsors or people. As such,
Piwik does not have the resources to provide customer support on level of a
multibillion dollar company like Google. It relies on the Piwik forum and
community to help each other out. The forums and community are active, but
sometimes responses are a little slow; there isn’t anyone users can call on the
phone for immediate help (About Analytics, n.d.).
Looking
at GA and Piwik side by side, the two are comparable both for basic web
analytic tools and for high-power advanced and detailed tools (e.g., the
e-commerce reports). It is tough to clearly state one is superior to the other.
Both GA and Piwik are easy enough to for a small company and scalable and
robust enough to handle enterprise and extremely high traffic websites. GA and
Piwik both offer mobile apps so a user can get the information on the go. Piwik
does offer some unique features: the customizable dashboards and widgets, the site
search tool, and the transition analytics feature. However, for a marketer or
CIO looking to get buy-in from management, GA probably makes more sense. GA has
strong brand recognition and is more trusted and more established, so it is an
easier sale to a skeptical management team. GA also provides better customer support,
which would garner more consideration from a user or company that isn’t savvy
to web analytics.
Nevertheless,
for a company that is concerned about privacy and keeping its own data, Piwik
is the choice over GA. One of the main points of differentiation Piwik likes to
highlight is the fact that a company keeps its own data and Piwik does not have
access to it. A company’s data is not sold or used for other purpose like it
can be when a company uses GA (Piwik, n.d.).
References
About Anaylytics. (n.d.). Piwik.
Retrieved from: http://www.aboutanalytics.com/general-public-licence/piwik
Demers, T. (May 10, 2013).
Web Analytics Software Comparison: Identifying The Right Web Analytics Tools
For Your Business. Search Engine Land. Retrieved from: http://searchengineland.com/web-analytics-software-comparison-identifying-the-right-web-analytics-tools-for-your-business-149373
Opensource.com.
(n.d.). What Is Open source. Retrieved from: http://opensource.com/resources/what-open-source
Piwik. (n.d.). Piwik – User Guide. Retrieved from: http://piwik.org/docs
Qayyum, A. (Sep.
2013). Google analytics vs piwik: the ultimate comparison. Smashing Hub.
Retrieved from: http://smashinghub.com/google-analytics-vs-piwik-the-ultimate-comparison.htm
Taylor, V. (Jan. 14,
2014). Take charge of your
stats: Piwik Analytics vs. Google Analytics. Coach Notes Blog. Retrieved from
http://www.localbusinesscoachonline.com/coachnotes/piwik-analytics
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