What do you use for traffic/conversion analytics? We use Google Analytics, I’m familiar with it but want to become really good at it.
Can anyone recommend a google analytics for SaaS businesses course? Videos? Blog posts? If I can’t find the right resources I thought I’d spend a few weeks learning GA and writing about it.
I hate Google Analytics. It’s confusing, bloated, offers a million options, which makes it difficult to find what you are looking for.
For something as simple as landing page, there are 2-3 options, only one of which is right (never figured what the other ones do).
The Ux is terrible. Even though I’ve used it many times, it confuses me everytime. Even simple things like adding/removing websites aren’t obvious, and I have to Google how to do them every single time.
Sorry for the rant, but I really hate GA.
As for what to use, I moved to Clicky.com. A million times better and really easy to use.
I use Piwik and I like it a lot.
It’s free, you can run it on your own server, so no ‘spying’ (at least not so obviously 
)
It’s quite straightforward and it does all I need.
I second Piwik. Forgot all about it.
Google Analytics is great. Agree, it is powerful, a lot of features you’ll never understand and use and hence it is complicated. However, once you setup things properly, customise your dashboards it is very easy to use.
I’m sure all these competitive tools are easy when you start using them, but if later you’d want to get some advanced report that developers of these systems did not hardcoded you are in troubles.
Also regarding the ‘spying’ thing. There is no doubt, G do it. But the only thing I can imagine where they use it is to enhance its search and send proper traffic to proper pages of your site. And if you have good product and website, I’m sure this is better for all. For Google, for visitors and for you.
UPDATE: Google Analytics blog is great resource to learn GA. http://analytics.blogspot.cz/search/label/Beginner%20Topics
http://analytics.blogspot.cz/search/label/Advanced%20Topics
We use KissMetrics for conversions and such. But they are now ridiculously high-priced.
We also use Google AdWords (they have a conversion-tracker module, it’s free). Also we use a self-hosted A/B testing framework which is actually the only metrics you have to track on a daily basis.
For SEO we are fine with google webmaster tools.
Google Analytics is indeed overloaded with tons of features but it’s ok. “Landing pages” is basically the only report we user there…
Hey Allan,
How’s PCB treating you? Not sure if you remember but I lived there for a bit and came to one of your meetups.
I’d consider myself pretty familiar with GA, was GA certified or whatever the f they called it several years ago, but it sucks man. It’s a powerful tool for the price though.
Omniture’s suite of tools used to be my favorite, they’ve been bought by Adobe though so not sure how that turned out, worth a try.
I haven’t used it yet, still using GA since I know it well, but Clicky looks awesome. I’d definitely recommend giving it a try.
Hi Ben, of course I remember you, I’ll check out Omniture’s tools.