While Google Analytics is considerably less useful after search traffic data is “not provided“, competing analytics vendors have embraced a more realistic way of looking at visitors.

More tools measure people not traffic.

An introduction to Piwik, Woopra, Mixpanel.

From Web counters to Web analytics

When search engines used to dominate Internet traffic, you had to monitor website traffic. Based on the numbers of page views, visits or visitors you could quickly find out whether your optimization efforts have worked out or whether Google decided to update something so that your traffic dropped significantly.

Looking at curves and pretty graphs you could also see some progress or growth.

I remember when Google Analytics has been made available to the public for “free”. It was a great day for search engine optimizers. By now Google Analytics is the de facto standard analytics software most sites use. It’s not as overwhelming as the Google search market share, but it dwarves the competition nonetheless.

Back then I mostly used tools like StatCounter – the most popular web counter service that time. They were OK for small private sites, but insufficient to keep track of business development online.

Why seek Google Analytics alternatives at all?

Over the years Google Analytics has become increasingly bloated and the numerous interface changes required constant learning to keep up. Privacy concerns and independence from Google were other issues that led me to consider alternatives. Data inaccuracy was probably chief among them. That’s why I still use GA but along it a few other tools.

Unlike enterprise level businesses, I can’t afford to pay thousands of dollars a month for one of the large scale competitors of Google:

• Adobe (Omniture)
• Webtrends
• Unica

I had to look at tools that are more affordable even for freelancers or small businesses. Piwik, a free open source and self-hosted solution was among them early on. I have used Woopra, an early real-time analytics tool for several years as a backup. Mixpanel that focused on actions rather than sheer traffic appeared later and I added it as a nice-to-have for additional insights.

From Web analytics to people analytics

Sure, the current Google Analytics offers a useful audience insights. The problem still is though that you can’t zoom in on the actual people. Marketers come up with workarounds like defining personas or cohorts but mostly you still have to look at groups of people not at individuals. You could argue that you run a large company that has thousands or more visitors per day so it does not make sense. You err though.

In this social media driven era some visitors are significantly more important than others.

Influencers, heroic readers or true fans, for example, need to be identified and made happy. I don’t even mean being identified by names. You can assign numbers or whatever you like to them to depersonalize the data as long as you make sure to know who is your most avid reader, your most ardent supporter or even your single highest converting visitor, etc. You can’t do that with simple or even complex web analytics like the one Google offers.

Woopra, Mixpanel and Piwik – Three different approaches to people metrics

Woopra is my favorite when it comes to people metrics. Every visitor gets a number by default and an (empty) profile. You can add information like name or mail address manually but you also can automate a lot of other things. For example I tag “heroic readers” automatically, that is people who have stayed on my blog for more than half an hour and viewed 5 or more pages.

I look up the articles my heroic readers have visited and improve them in case they need an update.

Next time I write an article I elaborate on the topics popular among my most value readers. Otherwise you tend to serve the volatile social media audience or the Google-biased fickle search traffic only rather than the people who really care about your publication because these stats are obvious. Social shares or Google traffic only show a skewed world view though.

Unfortunately Woopra is not cheap anymore even though it’s more sophisticated. There is a free version for small sites, but it doesn’t support visitor or “customer” profiles. You can still tag or in Woopra’s word as “label” visitors automatically though.

For example, Woopra labels everybody who has visited 5+ pages and stayed for half an hour or longer as a heroic reader in my case. I still have an old account from a few years back so I pay less than new users. Enterprise clients even get a Salesforce integration which is the next logical step of dealing with your customers once you can identify them.

Mixpanel is a tool for web developers or companies who employ them. Despite being a former web dev myself with firm JavaScript skills I didn’t manage to use Mixpanel to its full effect. You can tag visitors by using JavaScript for Mixpanel.

For starters, you can also add your existing client database or email list as a CSV or profile by profile. This is similar to a social CRM tool like Nimble but you can add as many custom form inputs as you want. For example

I really like to remember not only the name and address of my online supporters but also their social media profile URLs.

Similar to Woopra, there is also a free version of Mixpanel for small sites. Up to 1,000 user profiles are free. That’s perfectly sufficient for most bloggers who want to identify the most important readers and supporters. Given the 90-9-1% rule of lurkers, sharers, creators you basically just need to identify a few dozens of your readers and keep them happy by looking up what they like.

Beyond people, Mixpanel does not really measure traffic but focuses on “actions” so it’s ideal for tracking conversions. You need to code a bit here, but that’s far less complex and time consuming so that I was able to implement it right away.

With version 2 of Piwik, the free open source analytics software not only has got a fresh new interface but it also added user profiles. Sadly the features is a bit hidden. You have to look up the “visitor log” and then mouse over the right edge of the line on any visitor to see a “view visitor profile” link.

Even though I updated my PHP on my server to match the requirements of Piwik 2, the “visitor profile” feature has led to an error.

I notified the Piwik team via Twitter but they only asked me to “create a ticket” instead of providing help. That’s the typical woes of free software. Nonetheless, the feature is very promising as you can see on the Piwik site itself and I hope I will be able to at least test it in the future.

Creative Commons image by Leigh Harries