Google Analytics vs. Crazy Egg

There is no doubt that Google Analytics is the leader in the web analytics game. Google Analytics is a free (or "freemium" - where you pay for additional access) tool available to everyone that tracks the activity of website users and turns it into reports and data available to the website owner. According to Bowman (2019), within Google Analytics you can:

Create custom reports

Integrate with other tools 

Show real-time traffic data

Understand where your traffic came from

Rank your pages by popularity

Track campaigns

Export to Excel

My previous blog posts also discuss some of the things that you can do within Google Analytics. These are things such as bounce rate, exit rate, real time reports, other reports, and more. The main thing you can do with Google Analytics is help you to make decisions based on qualitative and quantitative aspects of data collected from your website (Kantha, 2017). 

With all of the great things Google Analytics can do, there are also some negative aspects. For example, if your website has high volume, you may need to pay for additional features. Hence the term "freemium." The premium components of Google Analytics costs $150,000 USD per year. For large conglomerate companies, this is pocket change, but for growing businesses this cost can be daunting. 

As touched on before, Google Analytics can be hard to understand for the everyday consumer. You may need hours to watch tutorials and learn the system, just for there to be new updates and changes to the interface, or you may need to hire someone who is a Google Analytics pro. These things cost time and money. 

The usage of Google Analytics requires constant training because the user interface is constantly being updated. The changes are sometimes fairly substantial as new features are being introduced and old features are either being combined or completely discarded (Kantha, 2017). While these features are usually a positive thing, it is still something that is time consuming and sometimes frustrating to deal with.

One thing that Google Analytics does not do, for sure, is tell you "why" (Soell, 2018). It gives you all of the statistics and numbers surrounding visitor data, but it does not tell you the "why" behind this data. This is left for you to interpret from the various reports and data given by Google Analytics. Also, it is never 100% accurate and sometimes data can be delayed up to 48 hours (Soell, 2018).

Another huge thing that hinders Google Analytics data is that it is cookies based. Therefore, users clearing out cookies, blocking them, using multiple devices, etc. can all skew one’s data (Soell, 2018). Google Analytics was also created before social media, and still sometimes lags in regards to social media data reporting. 

All of these aspects can cause you to need to integrate some competing or complementary web analytics tools. Luckily, there are many out there, which can complement the information given by Google Analytics. 

Social media is a huge part of most marketing plans in today's digital age, and it is a great place to reach your consumers directly and start a conversation with them. This can allow them to see you as more of a "person" not just a brand. There are many different social media platforms out there, and I' have previous touched on the most popular and the benefits to each in a previous blog post, so I will not repeat myself. However, these web metrics/analytics tools are great complementary tools to go along with Google Analytics. 

Facebook Page Insights (free!)

If you utilize Facebook for your business, it comes with free analytics tools, and provides detailed information about your follower counts, likes, comments, shares, and more. It also provides information about the users who interact with your content, and the content itself. With this information, you can optimize your social presence to increase likes, followers, and shares (Flores, n.d.).

Twitter Analytics (free!)

Similar to Facebook Page Insights, Twitter Analytics provides information in regards to your Twitter profile, and information about your followers and what topics they find most interesting (i.e. which tweets are performing the best and reaching the most people). You can see your engagement rate, impressions, and link clicks.

Instagram Insights (free!)

With a business profile, Instagram provides user and data insights in relation to your profile and the content posted to it. It details content, audience, and activity data, as well as the number of profile views, post views, website clicks, and specific post insights. It tells you when your followers are most active, how many impressions each post gets (and from where), and demographic data about your followers.

Aside from free social media analytics, there are complementary services to Google Analytics. Crazy Egg is one that I have discovered and believe it to be the perfect add-on to Google Analytics. It does not provide the small details, nor does it provide as much detail as Google Analytics, however it answers the "why" question (previously mentioned).

Crazy Egg

Crazy Egg is an analytics platform that tracks and optimizes website visitor behavior so you can improve the user experience, increase your conversion rates, and boost your bottom line (Crazy Egg, n.d.). Their website says that their tools allow you to:

• Understand how customers are navigating your site.
• Identify where they're getting stuck.
• Make quick changes that directly impact revenue.

With easy-to-follow heatmaps, overlays, and other visualizations, you can see exactly what your customers are doing on your page (Flores, n.d.). Crazy Egg shows you where people are clicking and where they aren’t, how far down the page they’re scrolling, their mouse movements, and more, which makes it a great tool for improving your site’s design and content by learning what your visitors find most interesting or useful (Flores, n.d.).

Crazy Egg (n.d.) says that their service is for anyone, but they have found those who use their service are in:

• Education
• Small business owners
• Ecommerce companies
• Customer acquisition professionals
• Agencies (SEO, paid advertising, design)
• UX and UI designers
• Lead gen/professional service businesses
• Growth marketers
• People frustrated by Google Analytics

The following information is directly from the Crazy Egg website, which details the different reports, recordings, and testing abilities.

SNAPSHOTS

Take digital snapshots of your webpages and generate easy-to-understand reports that display your visitors (and users) click behavior.

Heatmap report

Scrollmap report

Confetti report

RECORDINGS

The Recordings feature gives you the power to virtually stand right beside people while they use your site.

Watch exactly where your visitor’s mouse or finger goes.

Know which sections of a webpage or your site visitors completely avoid.

Find out how long visitors stay on your site and where they struggle.

A/B TESTING

Fine tune your voice and message and know you've implemented the best solution.

Identify areas of your webpage which could improve your user experience.

Make changes and experiment with new ideas.

Learn which experiments worked best and continue making improvements.

Crazy Egg is ~not~ a free service. It ranges from $24-$249 a month, with the option to customize your plan. Each plan is based on page views and recordings. This still beats the $150,000 a year price tag on Google Analytics' Premium Service. It is hard to compare and contrast the two, as they provide much different information in different ways.

These are just a few of the many, many, many web metrics tools available to everyone on the internet. Of course, the proper fit for each depends on aspects, like budget (because they are not all free), time available, and willingness to learn new things (or pay someone to do so). 

Of course, these do not include metrics and analytics given by the web host, which is very popular. Blogger provides very basic information, such as number of views and comments, but other web hosts provide detailed information or allow ad-ons that give analytic and metric data information. However, my personal recommendation is to use all of these tools, and Crazy Egg with Google Analytics to gain a full picture, with the qualitative and quantitative data that GA provides, with the visual reports and recordings that Crazy Eggs provides.  

References

Bowman, A. (2019, January 9). What is Google Analytics? The Pros, The Cons, and the Ugly Missing Link [2019]. Retrieved from https://www.impactbnd.com/blog/google-analytics-shortcomings.

Crazy Egg. Make your website better. Instantly. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.crazyegg.com/.

Dubois, L. (n.d.). 11 Best Web Analytics Tools. Retrieved from https://www.inc.com/guides/12/2010/11-best-web-analytics-tools.html.

Kantha, J. S. (2017, November 30). Reviewing the Pros and Cons of Google Analytics. Retrieved from https://medium.com/@jasons_x/reviewing-the-pros-and-cons-to-google-analytics-556edff7dfa8.

Flores, T. (n.d.). 8 Website Analytics Tools for Marketing. Retrieved from https://www.smartbugmedia.com/blog/8-website-analytics-tools-you-should-be-using.

Soell, Brian. (2018, June 17). Limitations of Google Analytics. Retrieved from https://siteupturn.com/limitations-of-google-analytics/.