

Google Analytics - 20 Ways to Fix Analytics. Please Hurry? - berecruited
http://ryanspoon.com/blog/2008/05/18/google-analytics-20-ways-to-fix-analytics-please-hurry/

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thorax
I'm leaning more towards live+historical analytic tools like Woopra and to
some extent clicktale.

These have _absolutely_ changed the way we look at our web visitors. Now
hosting feels a bit like being a BBS sysop, especially on our medium-to-small
sites.

Google Analytics still makes good quick reports that are useful when
discussing traffic with investors/advertisers. Yet we're using their dashboard
less and less now that the live tools provide us some decent statistics for
our smaller sites.

I have to agree adding an API for Google Analytics would be great. Woopra has
neat javascript tricks where you can add additional information about the user
from your backend to be passed to woopra. So in the GUI interface we can tie
traffic to actual usernames (avatar images, too) rather than IP addresses.
This is hard to describe how useful it is--- nameless IP addresses and user-
agent strings lead you to "guess" when users are the same and it doesn't help
across machines. When you can see how a specific customer uses your site over
a month or two, it can help a lot in understanding what you've done wrong and
right with your site.

Quick advice: If you have a small website (50k-1k page views a day) and you're
not using something like woopra and clicktale to understand what your users do
when they visit your sites, you're losing a great opportunity to make your
site better for customers.

 _Edit_ : A quick search turned up a few other live-analytic hybrids out there
I hadn't seen before. Like whoson.com seems to have a self-hosted version.
Might experiment with those, too.

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schammy
Clicky has an API and real time + historical data - <http://getclicky.com>

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thorax
That's awesome. I didn't know clicky existed.

I really like your features as listed and shown in the demo. They're almost a
match for the things Woopra is showing off in their current beta. Your prices
sound awesome, so we may give you a shot, too, especially when the free beta
ends.

I'll be watching to see what next features you guys add. I'm a huge fan of
real-time visitor analysis and you look promising. Good luck!

~~~
schammy
Thank you!

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auston
I'd like to suggest that you try to get these feature's implemented in
getclicky. They're smaller. I feel like that make's them more susceptible to
change. I think it's pretty apparent that Google isn't really listening to us
here.

Plus they already has some of these features, which I think is awesome.

<http://getclicky.com/>

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schammy
Lucky for you, the developer of Clicky actually reads this web site. (Yeah,
that'd be me).

#1 and #2 (API and real time) we have been doing at Clicky for a LOOOOOOOONG
time. I still am in awe that Google hasn't released an API - that's just
insane.

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auston
Interesting, we've chatted before via email.

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lux
You know, I would love an official API and several other features mentioned.
But what I really want to see is faster serving of the Javascript included in
my pages.

Several times recently, I've gone to my sites and it seems to never finish
loading because Analytics is being slow again. It's at the foot of the page
and installed correctly, but since it doesn't finish or close its connection
it keeps the loading icon spinning forever which makes some users think
there's still more to come. The last thing any analytics package should do is
decrease the speed perception of your site.

Simple solution:

a) We download and install the Javascript on our end -- less for Google to
serve, so they can focus on just saving the data.

b) They email us whenever a new version of the Javascript comes out, so we can
update our copies.

That's not so hard, is it? Analytics is a nice stats interface, but it doesn't
feel like it's been improved much (except for a new skin) in a long time.
Expecting the above to be fixed, even just by improving the speed/stability of
their JS serving, is the least we can hope for really.

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ComputerGuru
Number 1 is already possible and its even advised by Google. However, you
don't get email updates.

I can't find the link that advises its use right now, but this link talks
about hosting ga.js on your server:
[http://www.google.com/support/googleanalytics/bin/answer.py?...](http://www.google.com/support/googleanalytics/bin/answer.py?answer=69588&useful=1&show_useful=1&comment=)

~~~
lux
That page seems to only be talking about the switch from their old to their
new javascript include, which is still hosted by them... But without email
notices, hosting it yourself isn't really a viable or stable option
unfortunately.

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jakewolf
And for anyone paying over X $'s a month in Adwords we should definitely get
free live stats.

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tom_rath
I'd add in "add a checkbox to remove weekends from displayed results".

Selling business software, we've found weekends are a dead-zone which throws
the numbers off. It's not a huge issue, but it makes things a smidge more
difficult to trend.

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Mystalic
Someone's got to step up and become THE competition to Analytics. That's
perhaps the only way to get a behemoth like Google to respond with better
innovation,

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tejava
Great feedback. Ill try them out. Anyone tried hitwise?

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markbao
It's not JUST Google Analytics that can use this list to improve their
system... ANY analytics system should be listening to this.

