COMPARISON OF PIWIK AND GOOGLE ANALYTICS · Piwik has a number of plugins and as it is open source,...
Transcript of COMPARISON OF PIWIK AND GOOGLE ANALYTICS · Piwik has a number of plugins and as it is open source,...
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COMPARISON OF PIWIK AND GOOGLE ANALYTICS
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WHAT IS PIWIK?
Piwik is the leading open-source analytics platform that gives
you more than just powerful analytics:
• It is built on free, open-source software
• 100% complete data ownership
• User privacy protection, 3rd parties are not mining your
data.
• User-centric insights.
• Customizable and extensible.
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WHAT IS GOOGLE ANALYTICS?
Google Analytics is a “freemium” web analytics service
offered by Google that tracks and reports website traffic.
Google launched the service in November 2005 after
acquiring Urchin. Google Analytics is now the most widely
used web analytics service on the Internet
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OVERVIEW OF DIFFERENCES
While they are quite similar in many respects, there are a number of differences that make Piwik an
appealing choice when considering an alternative to Google Analytics.
Dashboards
Filtering
Flow Reporting
Ease of use
Visitor Details and Tracking
Widgets and Embedding Them
White Labeling
Data Ownership
Log Tracking
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DASHBOARDS
• While Google Analytics limits you to a maximum of 12
reports or widgets per dashboard, Piwik’s only limitation is
four columns.
• Piwik provides a dashboard that contains the overview of
all the websites tracked under a server
• Both dashboards allow one to see the “big picture” and are
interactive.
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FILTERS AND SEGMENTATION
• While both platforms offer segmentation, Google
Analytics segmentation must be applied each time
you log in.
• Within Piwik, different segments can be views and
compared via the comparison dashboard.
• Segmentation is overlaid on the same graph or
widget within Google Analytics.
• Filters, a way that doesn’t need to be applied each
time and to each report is a destructive, go forward
process.
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FLOW REPORTING
• While flow reporting can be accomplished under either
system. Piwik offers just a basic transition though there is a
premium plugin that offers click path.
• Google Funnels can not utilize advance segmentation, as
such they would need to be built upon a filtered dataset to
eliminate the referral spam.
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VISITOR DETAILS AND TRACKING
• Google Analytics expressly states that they do not track (or at
least provide) data that contains Personally Identifiable
Information (PII).
• Piwik can track visitors all the way down to their IP.
• Custom variables can contain Personally Identifiable
Information in Piwik.
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WIDGETS AND EMBEDDING THEM
• Piwik provides the code allowing one to quickly
embed a widget within an external site using
JavaScript.
• Utilizing the Embed API, you can also embed a
widget, but it takes a bit more time and effort.
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WHITE LABELING – PROVIDING CLIENTS WITH ACCESS
• As Piwik is open source, it has a couple of
white label solutions available. One from Piwik
itself and another from a 3rd party.
• Google Analytics can also be white labeled, but
the method to do so utilizes the API.
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DATA OWNERSHIP
• While you can certainly access the data in
Google Analytics, unless you pay for Premium,
the data is not yours and is subject to data
mining by Google.
• With Piwik, the data is yours and can easily be
brought in to a reporting database for enhanced
analytics and custom reports.
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LOG TRACKING AND IMPORTATION
• While you can import logs, campaign data,
sales data, etc. into Google Analytics; none of
it can contain Personally Identifiable
Information. This can be a limiting factor when
deciding to import data into Google Analytics.
• Piwik can import server logs to complement
the data captured within Piwik. Custom
imports can also be developed for Piwik.
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OTHER POINTS OF INTEREST
Historical / Trend reporting in Piwik is known as Evolution.
Piwik has a number of plugins and as it is open source, custom development can be performed.
Piwik understands Google Analytics campaign variables and can be configured to track those variables as well.
Goals can be created both in Piwik and Google Analytics to measure events like clicking a Call to Action link.
The visitor geolocation can be fine tuned down to the provided city level with the appropriate library.
Unlimited number of custom variables in Piwik compared to 20 in Google Analytics.
There is an Ecommerce plugin for Piwik which can track item level additions to a cart in addition to other reports.