Re:Funnel Analysis with Mixpanel (YC S09)
by jonmc12 on Tuesday September 01, 2009 @02:14PM
(#798527)
I was looking for a web analytics solution recently. I looked at Mixpanel, but it was hard for me to understand what benefits the product had over google analytics other than being real-time.
Event tracking / funnel analysis look about the same on both products.
Maybe I'm waiting for the article - 'how to use realtime analytics to improve your site'.
Re:Funnel Analysis with Mixpanel (YC S09)
by patio11 on Tuesday September 01, 2009 @10:53PM
(#799361)
Event tracking / funnel analysis look about the same on both products.
I use both.
1) The funnel visualization in Mixpanel is better, particularly for longer funnels.
2) Tracking interactions which do not map on a one-to-one basis with pageviews is a pain in the keister in Google Analytics. For example, purchases for me are consummated off-site and there is no guarantee that the customer will return to my Thank You page to get tagged by GA's conversion code. However, since the off-site system does ping a script on my server, I can use Mixpanel's API to complete the last step in that customer's funnel. (Finally, my number of conversions reported actually bears strong resemblance to the number of sales I made in the same period.)
3) Google Analytics really, really is suboptimal for funnel segmentation along any axis which isn't available to the browser. For example, a logged in user to my site might be a guest, a trial user, or a paying customer. I want to know completion rates for a particular interaction broken down by that role. This is, literally, one line of code added to my internal Mixpanel API. If I were using Google Analytics, I'd have to start tagging many pages with arcane Javascript to cookie up the visitor with utm_some_garbage_here_argh, then configure custom segments in Google Analytics, then finally be able to sort by that.
Re:Funnel Analysis with Mixpanel (YC S09)
by gonepostal on Tuesday September 01, 2009 @01:42PM
(#798455)
Has anyone been having trouble with mixpanel?
Since yesterday I've been trying to investigate it for analytics for a new app I'm building. I follow their _dead_ simple examples and I never get any data logged. I'm not sure if it's something I'm doing or if the service is having trouble.
Event tracking / funnel analysis look about the same on both products.
Maybe I'm waiting for the article - 'how to use realtime analytics to improve your site'.
I use both.
1) The funnel visualization in Mixpanel is better, particularly for longer funnels.
2) Tracking interactions which do not map on a one-to-one basis with pageviews is a pain in the keister in Google Analytics. For example, purchases for me are consummated off-site and there is no guarantee that the customer will return to my Thank You page to get tagged by GA's conversion code. However, since the off-site system does ping a script on my server, I can use Mixpanel's API to complete the last step in that customer's funnel. (Finally, my number of conversions reported actually bears strong resemblance to the number of sales I made in the same period.)
3) Google Analytics really, really is suboptimal for funnel segmentation along any axis which isn't available to the browser. For example, a logged in user to my site might be a guest, a trial user, or a paying customer. I want to know completion rates for a particular interaction broken down by that role. This is, literally, one line of code added to my internal Mixpanel API. If I were using Google Analytics, I'd have to start tagging many pages with arcane Javascript to cookie up the visitor with utm_some_garbage_here_argh, then configure custom segments in Google Analytics, then finally be able to sort by that.
Since yesterday I've been trying to investigate it for analytics for a new app I'm building. I follow their _dead_ simple examples and I never get any data logged. I'm not sure if it's something I'm doing or if the service is having trouble.
If you still have problems email us at [email protected] responsive.