Top 10 Website Statistics and Web Analytics platforms

Latest news about Website Statistics and Web Analytics platforms

2020. Microsoft launched website analytics platform Clarity



Microsoft has introduced Clarity, a dashboard designed to measure website engagement and to indicate what changes could improve the user interface (UI) and an overall online customer experience. Clarity operates with a simplicity similar to current social media dashboards. Like Google Analytics it is a user interface divided into four key segments. The difference is that Clarity is focused more on heatmap analysis: Heatmap and Recording are the main analysis panels, while Dashboard summarizes UI and page performance metrics. The fourth panel, Settings, is meant for further account adjustments. The Heatmap panel offers two views of user interactions on a given web page. One view is click maps, which displays where page visitors are generally clicking. The other is a scroll map, to also show how page visitors move up and down a given page.


2020. Google Analytics 4 allows to combine website and mobile app statistics



Google has unveiled a major update to its website analytics platform Google Analytics 4. The main new feature is the new resource type App + Web. With it, you can combine site and mobile application data, create unified reports for further analysis. In addition, the service has significantly redesigned the functionality of analytics tools, improved visualization of user behavior and switched to a new model "Event + Parameter". For online stores, the service allows now to create groups of users based on the likelihood that they will place an order or leave the resource within the next seven days. For now, you can stay on the old version of Universal Analytics (UA), and create new resources with two analytics at the same time (UA + GA4), since working exclusively with the new tool is not always convenient.

2018. Piwik rebrands as Matomo



After 10 years of Piwik and the amazing achievement of building the top open source analytics software that gives every user full control of their data, the developers are now looking forward to the next chapter. Thus, Piwik, the community project, will now become Matomo. The only change is our name, everything else stays the same. With the strong focus on privacy worldwide and the upcoming privacy regulations about to be legislated in Europe, it is clear that the developers were on the right mission from the very beginning. With the upcoming big release Matomo 4.0 planned for this year, new privacy protections will bring users the tools to be compliant with the GDPR privacy laws. And Matomo will grow in line with these regulations, with a very clear and focused vision.


2016. Google Analytics adds automated insights



Google Analytics makes it easier for users to find the important trends in their data on iOS and Android, where, in the Assistant screen, you should now see automatically generated insights. For example, if your website or app had a sudden jump in new users, Google Analytics will highlight that, and tell you where those new users came from. Or if you’re an e-commerce company, it can tell you which products had the biggest rise in sales. This is information that Google Analytics was already tracking, but now it’s being surfaced in an quick-to-read card format. So businesses don’t click around to different pages to find the information, and they’re less likely to overlook important changes in the data.


2016. New Google Analytics app improves user experience


The latest version of Google Analytics app (3.0) includes a few features heavily influenced by chat platforms. Google has simplified the navigation in the app. The cleaner interface makes reports easier to view, and metrics and dimensions appear within scorecards. I found the scorecards reminiscent of the widgets in the Google Analytics dashboards.  The scorecards list a few top dimensions in a given report. Creating a familiar brief view of metrics and dimensions takes advantage of familiar tablet and smartphone user behaviors. Users can swipe to maneuver to their intended dimensions, and the shorter listing permits easier discovery of reports to bookmark.


2015. Google Analytics adds Calculated Metrics



Google introduced a new feature to Google Analytics called Calculated Metrics. It allow users to insert custom metrics derived from existing Google Analytics metrics. This saves users a step, allowing them to perform calculations without having to exit the report. Think of it as a quick means to add a compound metric that comes up frequently in business intelligence discussions. For example, an e-commerce retailer could insert a currency conversion metric by using the Revenue metric from Google Analytics reports and multiplying it by the current conversion rate. Calculated metrics can be found in the admin panel, under the view column.


2015. Website personalization service Optimizely raises $58M



Optimizely, the company that has become synonymous with A/B testing, has raised $58 million. While Optimizely is best known for tools that allow customers to test different variants of their website and find the one that performs best, it’s now moving into new areas, with the launch of Optimizely for iOS last year, and most recently, the release of Optimizely Personalization. Now Optimizely has become the top service for optimizing websites (according to Alexa) and mobile apps (according to MixRank). Customers include CNN, Microsoft and Virgin America. And while plenty of other companies have released their own A/B testing tools, Optimizely remains distinguished by the strategy of building “best in class products” and then integrating with a variety of partners.


2015. A/B website testing service Optimizely to focuse on personalized experience



A/B website testing tool Optimizely goes beyond testing to allow any online publisher to deliver a personalized experience to their users. It launches a new product called Optimizely Personalization. Its personalization capabilities can be devided into four main categories. First, there’s connecting data, which means using a company data about their customers, as well as pulling information from services like BlueKai, Tealium and Lotame. Next comes discovering audiences — Optimizely recommends different audience segments that companies can target with different personalized experiences. Third, there’s optimizing experiences, which is where you actually create the different pages that the various segments will see. And last, there’s understanding impact, which means looking at the data to determine if your personalization actually leads to more engagement or purchases or whatever you’re looking for.


2015. Optimizely unveiled revolutionary website statistics engine


Website optimization platform Optimizely released the new feature — Stats Engine — that adds to the company’s experience optimization platform by delivering test results that are "always valid" and "freed from the limitations of traditional statistical analysis". Developed in collaboration with statisticians at Stanford University, company officials said Stats Engine relies on innovative approaches in statistical analysis. Combined with the company's own algorithms, it allows customers to interpret and act on data quicker "and more confidently than ever before," the company noted.


2014. Chartbeat wants web analytics standards to be open



Real-Time web analytics service Chartbeat is making public all of the metrics, standards and methods of measurement it uses internally — including a detailed breakdown of their weaknesses and limitations. Chartbeat CEO Tony Haile says the web-measurement and analytics market is still too full of black-box style tricks and smoke and mirrors, so he is making his company’s entire measurement process and methods public in the hope that others will do likewise. Historically, measurement and analytics companies have kept their methods to themselves as much as possible, and so have the media and publishing companies that make up most of their clients.


2014. StatCounter launched apps for iOS and Android



Website analytics service StatCounter launched mobile apps for iOS and Android. You just enter your username and password in the app and view an array of familiar StatCounter reports. You can compare your traffic trends for this week versus last week, examine recent visitors, view your most popular pages, check where your traffic came from, and much more. The app is free, but contains in-app ads, which can be removed at any point simply by upgrading your StatCounter account to a paid plan.


2014. Google Analytics is available on iPhone



More than two years after releasing Google Analytics for Android, Google released a version of Google Analytics for the iPhone. The app lets users check in on their website analytics — including real-time visitor reports — from the comfort of their smartphone. In addition to real-time and time-based reports, the app can be used to view behaviors, conversions and more. The UI aesthetic matches the other Google apps for iOS. The app also takes advantage of the sign-in features in Gmail, Google+ and the standard Google app for iOS. Google Analytics for iPhone is not optimized for the iPad, however. Hopefully iPad support will be added in a future update.


2014. Google Analytics gets brand new E-Commerce section



Google is rolling out a “complete revamp” of its Google Analytics E-commerce aimed at providing insights into the entire customer journey, not just the purchase itself. New metrics include: product detail views, ‘add to cart’ actions, internal campaign clicks, the success of internal merchandising tools, the checkout process, and purchase.It’s also possible to build audience segments directly from funnel reports to analyze user actions like cart and product page abandons. Funnels are available at the device category level as shown in the screenshot below.