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.
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.