Google Analytics vs Woopra

Posted: June 5, 2008

Since Google released its free analytics service, it has been dominating the web analytics market for hosted solutions. However, a few things have been lacking with Google Analytics which has allowed a window of opportunity for new competition to emerge. Enter Woopra.

Woopra

Just like Google Analytics, Woopra provides a few lines of Javascript code that you add to the bottom of each of your pages which allows for all your web traffic to be recorded remotely. The difference with Woopra is that it uses a Java based program to view all your stats and produces results in real time. Yes!! Real time!!! Nothing has been more frustrating in Google Analytics when you are setting up custom filters and then have to wait until midnight, only to find you forgot a dash, and then have to wait another 24 hours to see if your filter works. With Woopra, when someone hits your website the results are displayed in seconds within their software.

One of the strengths of Woopra is that it makes it pretty easy to look at a visitors history on the site. This can be interesting to see how visitors use your site and what page they go to in what order. This can all be done in Google Analytics too but Woopra makes it really easy.

The one really odd feature that stood out to me was the ability to instant message a visitor who is currently on the site. You can start a conversation with the visitor and then a popup appears within their browser that enables them to chat. I thought this was a bit bizarre and am not sure what the benefit of such a function is. If I was doing something like online banking and a popup came up where the site admin wanted to talk to me, that would freak me right out. But maybe there is a practical use for it, I’m just not sure what it is.

Woopra hasn’t totally converted me as it’s still in beta and has a lot more testing and features to be added, hence I continue to track with Google Analytics as well. With competition on the horizon, it is only a matter of time before Google changes their analytics service to display web stats in real time. It remains to be seen whether Woopra can generate enough long term users to become a viable competitor in the web analytics game.

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