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Why you shouldn't use Google Analytics for your MVP
by
Kameron Tanseli
https://kamerontanseli.ghost.io/why-you-shouldnt-use-google-analytics-for-your-mvp/
I use GA but added ga.events to my React code that capture all link and button clicks so I can see not just page views, but also how they are navigating to get there and how often certain features are being used. I also throw in ga.timing calls to track how long my REST service calls are taking from the client perspective. But you are right in that GA is a complicated monstrosity if you are not an analytics specialist. It is really geared towards marketing and assigning value to each interaction. That said - it's really easy to add to your app.
I agree with this - I wouldn't necessarily throw away GA simply because of vanity metrics. Using events, you can track goal completions well and if you place them in the right places it can tell you a lot about how people use your sites.
Recordings are fine, but metrics are also important. I'd say use both... The more data the better, no?
I'm literally about to integrate GA into a react MVP. Also using a REST API & redux for state management. This little insight into using events and timing for button clicks/ API response times is great. Thanks!
A few quick questions:
Any tips you have on this would be hugely appreciated!!
Yes, I'm using react-ga. It was ridiculously easy to implement. Just initialize it at the top of your app with your GA ID and then use any of the metrics anywhere in your app with 1 line of code. Works in components and plain functions.
The examples in the NPM docs are actually pretty clear. The only gotcha that I wasted time on was not realizing that the timing call I used for tracking my axios calls to the REST api is expecting milliseconds and not seconds like it displays in GA. I couldn't understand why they weren't showing up and it turned out it was because I was sending too small of a value.
To see the exception calls in GA you have to create a custom report since there is no standard report for that. This is a good blog post on getting it set up.
Thanks!! Really helpful and really appreciate your feedback on this one!
It's a great lib! Solves issues with logging events across subdomains too.
GA is critical for me: events, conversions, channel segmentation.
I've yet to find another tool that does this well, some GA competitors don't even have these features and focus exclusively on vanity metrics.
Hotjar is great for tracking user behaviour, but it's not exactly solving the same problems as GA.
GA is the only tool I've found (im sure there are others) that can measure events/conversions per channel.
You should check out FullStory. It's a blend of GA with Hotjar and offers segmentation and conversion funnels (even shows errors and pages that affect conversion)
Do you use FullStory's free plan only?
At the moment I'm on the trial :).
GA takes seconds to install. You can get an idea of how popular your pages are. That is valuable by itself.
Very interesting points here, I agree with a lot. Thanks for sharing!
I get what you're saying on what to focus on, but I don't agree one should not use GA.
Also that image is not Google Analytics the image is Google Search Console (which everyone should learn like a ninja)
This comment was deleted 4 years ago