The Ideal PRD for Web Analytics: Saying Goodbye to Google Analytics

Which analytics tool do you think is near-perfect?

I have used several Web Analytics tools over my 10+ years of experience in building and managing products. And to date, I don’t think there is a single product that I can call as near-perfect.

Hence, thought of jotting down what I feel is an Ideal Product Requirements Document (PRD) for Web Analytics.

A disclaimer, for readability and brevity purposes, I am not writing this as a formal PRD :)

Before I start, the trigger to write this came from Google's push.

Recently, Google asked everyone to shift to Google Analytics 4 (GA4) from their older version i.e. Universal Analytics (UA).

Anyone who is using the older GA will have to shift as they have stopped processing data for older versions starting 1st July 2023.

So, over the last few weeks, I have been trying to use GA4.

The more I use it the more frustrating it gets!

Some of the basics seem to be missing from the home page.

Some of the other tools I extensively use include Heap and FullStory. In fact, our current analytics stack is mostly a combination of these two to a large extent with some Universal Analytics usage.

Recently both these tools have also done quite a few changes: ranging from adding new features, UX changes, and more. And even Fullstory now seems more confusing than its previous version

So, here is a summary of what I would ideally like to have in a Web Analytics Product (P.S: I will  also try to add a slight pointer who does a better job among the three I have listed):

User metrics: It should have the ability to show basic metrics like: No. of total users, New users, Bounce rate, Avg. session time (While all three provide this in one form or the other, the erstwhile GA had the most simple dashboard to view this.)

Page insights: It should have the ability to show Page insights: Total page views, Unique Page Views, and how many sessions started on a page i.e. Landing Pages (Again all three can provide it in one form or the other but the older GA definitely provides a better view of this. I can't find a similar view in GA4 )

Traffic Insights: It should have the ability to show where the site is getting traffic from. For me, the tool should show it in the order of Channels/Referrer > Device > Geo. And hopefully, a tool that can intelligently solve for DIRECT as the source. (Heap is better here in terms of providing default views. Though, I see this as the weakest link for all the products I have experienced so far)

Events: It should allow a user to pass custom events as well as define events basis Button clicks, Anchor clicks, Page views. (Heap does this best among the three)

1. It should show top-performing events that a user has defined or show intelligent recommendations based on Clicks

2. It should also show in the same view where the event occurred. Mainly useful for custom events

3. For custom events, if a user passes a unique identifier of their customer, the product should be able to show the whole journey before and after the event for that customer

   
   

User Replay sessions: It should allow a user to playback user session recordings (This is FullStory's stronghold. It is mainly known for this. However recently Heap has also introduced this albeit for paid plans. GA doesn't provide this)

HeatMaps: It should allow a user to see aggregated scroll and click insights for a page (Again Fullstory does the best job here. Heap has introduced this recently and again in paid plans. GA doesn't provide this)

Apart from the above core features, the below makes the tool more appealing (these are mainly relevant for Heavy and Power Users)

• APIs: It should have robust APIs to fetch and send data. Ideally with integration with no-code tools like Zapier, and Make. This becomes very critical as the user base and traffic increases of a site (GA definitely has the best set of APIs. Since I have so far used the free versions of Heap and FullStory, I don't know their API's full potential)

  
  

• Filters: It should have the ability to slice and dice all the above insights using different type of filters.

  • Few of the main filters which I look at: A page path, UTM parameters, Geo, Device, Landing page

    
    

• Create User Segments: It should have the ability to create different user segments and see a combination of the above views for that particular segment

  
  

• Funnels: It should have the ability to see aggregated insights between a chain of events to see the drop between one step to another step

  
  

• Mobile App: Definitely helpful if there's an app through which all key insights can be shown

  
  

• Bot removal: It should have the ability to automatically discard the bot traffic. (FullStory does the best job among the three)

  
  

That's it for now :)

Not detailing the administrative type features here since I think that depends completely on the user personas a tool targets.

Also, a most important point to note here is while the features are absolutely essential, I think UX plays a major role in how effectively the features get discovered and used.

Personally for me, since I just don't consume the analytics report but also create one, for me, two important UX criteria are:

1. How easy it is to navigate to uncover deeper insights. Ideally, deep linking within a view is what works best for me. I don't want to always navigate from the menu

   
   

2. How easy it is to slice and dice different views

   
   

I am always eager to try out new tools. In fact, I have a few open-source tools in my pipeline like Plausible Analytics and PostHog that I am waiting to try once time permits.

If you are doing some amazing work in this space and want to get feedback, I am all ears :)

Also published here.