Choosing the Best Analytics Tool for Your Business

Choosing the Best Analytics Tool for Your Business

The world of web analytics is vast. Analytics packages include Clicky, Mint, Web trends, Kissmetrics, Crazy Egg, Mouseflow, Woopra and possibly the most well known of all tools, Google Analytics.  Each has certain benefits and limitations.  Knowing a few basic elements of your business and technology environments along with your budget will assist in selecting the proper tool (Jantsch, 2012).

This week’s blog post is geared toward those beginning their journey into web analytics with a review of Woopra and a comparison of Woopra to Google Analytics.

What is Woopra?

Woopra is a scalable web analytics program based upon actions that marries “on-site analytics and customer relationship management” (Melaugh, 2011) in order to provide a complete picture of customer behavior at an individual [not an aggregate] level.  This virtually eliminates any duplicate counts of customers who may begin a transaction on one screen and complete it on another as Woopra can track visitor actions “across multiple devices” (Melaugh, 2011).  Furthermore, Woopra offers a live chat option that can be configured to trigger when certain business-defined conditions occur.

Why is this important?  If a customer is having difficulty in placing an order or selecting a product or some other action that has been defined as a trigger event, an alert is configured to fire and a customer service agent is then able to respond with a prompt for a live web chat.  Not only could this save a sale or conversion but can also indicate potential areas in ones web site that may need to be investigated for performance or functionality.

What are Actions?

Woopra’s tracking revolves around actions that occur on-site.  An action is anything that a customer does on a web site including, but not limited to, watching a video, subscribing to a newsletter, searching for a product or term, adding or removing products from a shopping cart and completing a purchase.

What types of things does it measure?

Features are dependent on class of service.  The basic free edition includes entry level reporting broken out by “cohorts, countries, cities, regions, device types, platforms, browsers, languages, referrers, campaigns, queries, downloads, screen sizes and external links” (Woopra, 2013). 

Advanced features, available at the Small Business pricing tier, include funnel, conversion and retention reports.  These reports provide insight to “how different customer segments move through your funnel” (Woopra, 2014) and identifies which customer segments convert best and which do not so that you “can learn how you can improve them” (Woopra, 2014).

Customer Segmentation

Customers can also be tagged so that specific campaigns can be targeted toward them.  This can be done with both known [repeat customers] and new customers.  For example, a brand new customer would not have a profile but they can be offered a percentage off or free shipping with a special code for their first purchase by tagging them with a first campaign field (Woopra, 2014).

So, how much does it cost?

Woopra does not require any special hardware to run.  In fact, Woopra can be accessed online, via a desktop client or even a mobile application.  Subscription fees vary from $0 per month for the free version that contain a subset of features [i.e., no chat functionality] and basic real-time tracking and reporting to highly customized enterprise solutions that are priced on a per case basis.  The entry-level small business package begins at $80 per month and includes funnel, conversion and retention reporting, CRM integration, event triggers and automated reporting and lead generation.   Pricing is per site and based upon the number of actions per month

Woopra or Google Analytics?

The answer to this question goes back to budget, expertise and business need.  Both programs are simple to implement, offer web-based solutions, offer customizable campaign or goal tracking and provide similar reporting functionality.  Google Analytics is free and does not impose action limitations per month.

Other differences between the two packages include how they calculate metrics. For example, Woopra’s reporting is real-time and “accurate to the second” whereas, “Google Analytics reports based on who has been active on your site within the last 5 minutes. That means if a visitor is reading something on your site, watching a video, or idle for more than 5 minutes, Google Analytics won’t report that they’re on your website. It also means that if a visitor left your site within the last 5 minutes, Google Analytics will inaccurately show that they’re still on” (Woopra, 2014).

Woopra reports at an individual level and Google Analytics reports at an aggregate level and the use of “sampling for both collecting data and generating reports” (Woopra, 2014).  Lastly, Google Analytics does not filter out the use of multiple screens per user thus visitor counts and statistics on conversation rate could be erroneous.

Woopra provides a deeper understanding of customer experience and customer behavior.  Integrating existing customer relationship management data such as user name, email address to a user you can watch them move through your site and track the number of activities completed on-site, the last visit as well as length of time as a customer.  Having this level of intimacy, which Google Analytics does not provide, allows much more flexibility in designing marketing campaigns to target a subset of your customers. 

Additionally, you can identify the customers that generate the most revenue and monitor their patterns over time.  If they begin to frequent the site less or are less engaged you can label them as “at risk” and setup triggers to monitor them or create specific campaigns to encourage conversions.  Conversions rates can also be improved by implementing the web chat feature of Woopra to interact with customers while they are active on your site.  Google Analytics does not have this functionality.

The Bottom Line

Woopra and Google Analytics can provide a business with great tools to track campaigns and performance, to understand where their customers are coming from as well as where they may be struggling on site.  They both provide insights as to the customer experience and identification of areas where a web site should be optimized. 

In an ideal world business could use both Google Analytics and Woopra’s advanced features simultaneously to provide a more robust picture of performance to objectives; however, money talks and with the limitations of features and actions, Woopra is not the best choice for all businesses.  If money is an issue, choose Google Analytics and the free version of Woopra.  As your business grows then it would be well worth an upgrade to the advanced feature set of Woopra.

References

Jantsch, J. (2012, January 23). The 10 Smartest Web Analytics Tools | OPEN Forum. Retrieved February 8, 2014, from https://www.openforum.com/articles/the-10-smartest-web-analytics-tools/

Melaugh, S. (2011). Discover the Best Google Analytics Alternatives for 2013. Retrieved February 7, 2014, from http://imimpact.com/web-stats-alternatives-to-google-analytics/

Woopra (2014). Why are my stats different on Woopra than on Google Analytics? - Woopra. Retrieved February 7, 2014, from https://www.woopra.com/help/why-are-my-stats-different-on-woopra-than-on-google-analytics/

Woopra (2014). Woopra for every business - Woopra. Retrieved February 7, 2014, from https://www.woopra.com/pricing/

Woopra (2014). Analytics Reports - Woopra. Retrieved February 7, 2014, from https://www.woopra.com/platform/analytics/