Google's Universal Analytics was once the gold standard in online website tools, allowing business owners to track the way that their landing pages and campaigns were able to drive website traffic and convert browsers into paying customers.

As of 1st July 2023, Universal Analytics has been phased out once and for all and replaced by Google Analytics 4. This newer and updated version of the backend tool provides insight into how customers interact with businesses across different platforms and facilitates the segmenting of customers into different groups based on their interests, interactions, behaviour, and more.

But having a tool which does so much and promises the world and more comes with a caveat - and that’s that Google Analytics can be pretty challenging to use and get your head around. Not only that but Google Analytics is known to have a few sticking points around privacy, and is limited in its reporting.

Here at Social Loop we recognise that in order to be as informed as possible and make genuinely impactful decisions on behalf of your business, you need to have access to as much data and information as possible. It’s one of the reasons why we offer such comprehensive packages to assist and aid businesses in their marketing and growth - but it’s also what inspired this blog post.

Here are a handful of alternatives to Google Analytics that are worth exploring, which tap into and use all the data that is genuinely useful without overwhelming business owners with information.

Why analytics and data is important

Before we dive into some of the best alternatives on the marketplace, a little more on why this information matters. The fact is that when you have access to information about what your customers are interacting and engaging with, how long they spend on each webpage, what drives them towards your website, and what actions they make on your site, you can tailor the experience to achieve higher conversion and engagement.

What’s more, when you know what they are most likely to engage with, you can create entire campaigns for specific groups of users and customers - tapping into their specific pain points and relating to the solutions they are looking for.

All this is made possible with access to analytical data. Here’s how to get that data via a tool that best works for you.

HubSpot

HubSpot is a tool which centres on customer-centric marketing, using website data and analytics to inform its various marketing techniques and options. As such, its website tracking is comprehensive and allows users to monitor everything from page performance from certain marketing channels and campaigns to conversion.

HubSpot is firmly centred around marketing and so all of this feeds into how best to reach certain groups and customers.

Fox Metrics

A slightly more complex system to use, Fox Metrics takes the advantage of customer data and insight to the next level - creating dashboards and different tracking pages which depict performance and conversion for different customer groups. You can even have an alert to detect and flag abnormalities, which lets you isolate and deal with website issues more efficiently.

Matomo

With one of the big issues surrounding Google Analytics 4 being the lack of privacy, Matomo’s focus on privacy and data protection is a big advantage. Add to that the fact it is used all over the world to track website visits, user behaviour, and an opportunity to A/B test different campaigns and landing pages, and you have a future proof tracking platform which meets all prospective GDPR standards.

Clicky

Easy to use, simple to install, and centred around the benefit of insight as well as the importance of privacy and data protection, Clicky is often favoured over Google Analytics. One of the advantages is the real time tracking of data and engagement, which is all presented in a very basic way on an incredibly user friendly site.

Get to know your customers’ journey

Whether you opt for Google Analytics or one of the alternatives (of which there are many available across the market), the more you know about your customers and their online activity the more you can create a website and campaigns which resonate with them.

Here at Social Loop, analytics covers just one of the services that we offer, using this insight to frame memorable and engaging campaigns for all users. Get in touch with our team of experts to find out how we could use analytics for you.