As awesome as Google Analytics is, especially considering how much it gives you completely free of charge, it’s also quite intimidating when you see it for the first time (we talked about how to get started with Google Analytics recently).
Let’s face it … this:
… isn’t the most user friendly panel (although extremely feature-rich). And it certainly isn’t what a beginner to site analytics needs.
After all, probably all you really want is to just track how many visitors you get, and how those visitors spend their time on your WordPress site. For that, you might want to consider some Google Analytics alternatives. Here is the top 5, plus which is going to be the best for you based on your specific needs:
1. WP Slimstat Analytics
Our Google Analytics alternative #1 is a solution that’s native to WordPress and sits all within the WordPress dashboard.
Of course, what I’m talking about is a WordPress plugin. A plugin called WP Slimstat Analytics in this case.
Slimstat creates its own dedicated section in the wp-admin, and displays all traffic-related data there. For instance, if you go to the Overview section, you’ll see a complete panel telling you all sorts of things about your visitors:
Some details you can find there:
- Your traffic over a given period of time.
- Most popular pages/content on your site.
- Your top referrers.
- Demographic breakdown of your audience, and much more.
Get this Google Analytics alternative if you want to keep all of your traffic data within WordPress. (Slimstat is completely free.)
2. Clicky
Clicky is my personal favorite on this entire list. The great thing about Clicky is its utter simplicity.
Where Google Analytics is sometimes often confusing and difficult to navigate for a beginner (and sometimes even for advanced webmasters), Clicky delivers an uber-simple user interface, with all of the most important features clearly visible and understandable.
Of course, despite the simplicity, Clicky gives you all the insight you might need into your traffic numbers and the behavior of your audience once they come across your site.
Get this Google Analytics alternative if you want an uber-easy-to-use analytics solution. (You can track one site for free.)
3. Woopra
There are two things you should know about Woopra:
- It gives you all the standard traffic analytics features, just like every other tool on this list.
- Woopra also gives you huge insight into your visitors’ behavior in a very detailed way.
For instance, for each visitor, you get the exact path that they’ve taken on your site, and what sort of actions they’ve performed along the way (for example, the opt-ins they went through).
Get this Google Analytics alternative to track your visitors one by one. (Woopra is free for up to 30,000 actions per month.)
4. Crazy Egg
The main benefit of using Crazy Egg is that instead of getting a bunch of raw numbers, like, “yesterday you had X visitors; today there’s Y,” it presents you with a nice visual representation of what those numbers mean.
For instance, as part of Crazy Egg, you get access to heat maps, scroll maps, and a direct info on where people actually click when they visit your site.
Get this Google Analytics alternative if you want your analytics tool to give you suggestions on what you can do to make your site better, instead of just spitting out numbers at you. (Plans start at $9 a month.)
5. Kissmetrics
Last but not least, let’s conclude our list of Google Analytics alternatives with probably the most advanced option here.
Kissmetrics is an analytics solution meant to optimize your marketing strategy/methods, instead of just giving you traffic numbers. With Kissmetrics, you can perform a range of different experiments, and get a range of reports as a result of it (like a funnel report, cohort report, path report, and etc.).
Kissmetrics will also help you engage your visitors by segmenting them into different groups. Then, you can perform different actions on those groups. And much much more.
Get Kissmetrics if you need an advanced platform, capable of giving you detailed insights into your site’s traffic data, and the things you can do to optimize your online marketing in a world-class way. (Plans start at $200 a month.)
Which of these Google Analytics alternatives seems like the best solution for you? Or maybe you’re staying with Google Analytics for now?