Google Analytics vs Piwik: Why Details Matter
10:00 PM
Finding alternatives to free Google services can be
challenging. Google has name recognition and has already built brand loyalty on
a global scale; however, to say that Google has monopolized the web analytics
technology sector would be a bit of a stretch. There are some web analytic
services offered that are comparable to that of Google’s analytic services,
such as Piwik.
Piwik
Piwik is a free downloadable web analytics software platform
that, “… provides detailed reports on your website and its visitors, including
the search engines and keywords they used, the language they speak, which pages
they like, and the files they download” (Piwik, 2016). There are a few things
that stick out about Piwik, including the ability to host the software on your own
server. Being able to host the software on your own server allows users to
create highly customizable dashboards and have full control over the data. Piwik
also offers the option to create and add widgets for a more customizable experience
with the data collected. Below is a screengrab of how widgets are easily added.
Although customization is great to have, does Piwik offer high quality
analytics?
 |
| Piwik, 2016 |
How They Compare
Piwik is very vocal about being the better alternative to
Google Analytics. The company has even gone as far as creating blogs and
infographics to showcase the differences between Piwik and Google Analytics. Some
of the key differences between Piwik and Google Analytics are the services
offered, customization abilities, and current privacy policies.
Services
Like Google Analytics,
Piwik offers services such as real time data updates, top page URLs, page
titles, user countries, providers, operating system, medium during visit,
duration of time on the website, how many pages were visited during the
session, new vs returning visitors, custom variables, the ability to extract
files, and many more (Piwik, 2016). Piwik also offers goal reports, such as
subscribing to a newsletter, downloading content, or making a purchase through
an ecommerce site. While both platforms offer almost identical data, Google Analytics
still does better in segmentation than Piwik, which can be a deal breaker.
Although Piwik offers the option to segment data, the details and comparison
views are almost meaningless with the current setup. If a user were to go to
Piwik today and try to segment visitors’ operating system reports they would
see the following.
 |
| Zen Incognito, 2016 |
While this data is great to have to better target certain
content to specific users, Piwik does not offer any data beyond what is shown
above. With Google Analytics, users are able to see exactly how users on
certain operating systems are engaging with a site as well as the number of
sessions, bounce rate, and user-behavior.
 |
| Zen Incognito, 2016 |
Being able to segment data down to this much detail is
incredibly important. This type of data allows users to get the most out of
their data compared to only focusing on aggregate data. With Google Analytics’
custom segmentation features, users can compare multiple segments, such as
different operating systems, to see how traffic differs. Piwik also does not
offer the ability to overlay data to see how different segments stack up
against each other.
Customization
Piwik is an open-sourced program, which means users are able
to create and develop a more customized report based on their needs. This can
include creating widgets to include relevant news to a business, and it also
means that users can display reports how they want. With Google Analytics, users are able to
create customized reports with features made available to them by Google, but
they are unable to develop new code for their reports. There is also no option
to export data on stylesheets that are relevant to the user. For example, if a
marketing team wanted to showcase specific data such as website referrals, new
vs returning visitors, and user behavior, each report would have to be exported
individually and merged together another way. Piwik offers users to create
reports to only show the data they want to export, making it easier to export
and showcase the data collected.
 |
| Piwik, 2016 |
Privacy
Unlike Google Analytics, Piwik offers users 100% ownership of
the data collected. With Google Analytics, data may be shared with advertisers
to create a more personalized experience. According to Google (2016), their
automated systems can analyze a user’s content, such as emails, to provide a
more relevant product features and search results. Google’s privacy policy mentions that the data
collected through their services like Google Analytics will be used, “…to
improve your user experience and the overall quality of our services” (2016).
This may be an issue for some users and businesses, but not so much for others.
Though, since both services are free and easy to use, Piwik may be better in
terms of how the collected data is used since the user will be determining how
the data is used. Assuming that most users are aware that their information is
being used in some way or another while online, it might not be a huge issue
for some.
Final Thoughts
Although Piwik does offer very similar data reports, Google
Analytics still has a better interface and it is more user-friendly than Piwik.
Piwik, at least to me, seems to be more beneficial for those who are experienced
with coding so that they can better customized their reports. However, Piwik
does not offer enough detailed information on collected data in the way that
Google Analytics does. Segmenting data is incredibly important when trying to
target audiences. Like Kaushik (2013) said, without segmentation you can’t get
past the "ahh, I see something is happening” phase.
References
Piwik (2016).Dashboard and widigets. Piwik. Retrieved from https://piwik.org/docs/piwik-tour/#dashboard-widgets
Google. (2016). Privacy policy. Google. Retrieved from https://www.google.com/intl/en/policies/privacy/
Ajay. (2016). Piwik vs google
analytics: A detailed review. Zen
Incognito. Retrieved from https://zenincognito.com/piwik-vs-google-analytics-a-detailed-review/
Kaushik (2013). Google analytics
visitor segmentation: Users, sequences, cohorts! Kaushik. Retrieved from http://www.kaushik.net/avinash/google-analytics-visitor-segmentation-users-sequences-cohorts/
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