Why you should move away from Google Analytics

I would have said “break up” with Google Analytics, but for one to break up with someone, one needs to be in love with that someone first. And as massive a tool as Google Analytics may be, I don’t know of many people (yes, including marketers) who are in love with the product.

Do they see the need of it? Yes, of course. Are they happy with it? Only as long as they don’t have to use it themselves!

And that is the crux of the problem.

There are many problems with Google Analytics. One of the huge ones being its incredible disregard to privacy. Sure Google Analytics shows you some details on how your website visitors navigate through your site, but it collects a lot more data than just what it shows you. And the data collection doesn’t simply stop when the visitor moves away from your website.

Essentially, when you use Google Analytics, you are an accessory to this massive operation where your customers and website visitors data is tracked to be monetized. But for now, let us focus on why people don’t love using the product, despite it having so much data on your website usage.

As a product, Google Analytics is complicated. Which is why you find a ton of courses and certifications all claiming to help you “learn how to use Google Analytics”. But, should a product need to be “learned” for it to deliver value to its customers? Should the whole process not be intuitive?

I used to use Google Analytics quite extensively while I was working with a large ecommerce company (now owned by Walmart). But a lot of my team’s bandwidth used to be spent in collecting, collating and analysing the data. Collecting the data was the only bit Google Analytics was good for. Everything else after that was on us. The right analytics product should handle all three aspects of the process. Right down to showing its end user key insights, trends and indicators, and whenever possible, even recommendations.

With Benne, that’s what we are working towards.

If you would like to know more about Benne, DM me. Would love to chat.