Chartbeat or Google Analytics?

Having spent just a little bit of time with Google Analytics, I must admit that I am impressed with the offerings that the site can provide. However, surely, there must be other analytics software out there, and it would be be negligent on our part as a data analytics team to ignore these other options to, at the very least, see how they compare to Google Analytics. 

To begin this journey, I searched for analytics software for measuring traffic on, ironically enough, Google. Upon observing the staggering amount of options available, I began to tailor my search a bit more. I began to think about what I wanted to actually observe, and the solution became clear: I want to be able to better monitor my readership’s activities. With that in mind, I came across Chartbeat, an analytics tool that is used by the New York Times, Vice, and the Harvard Business review. If it’s good enough for them, I could probably use it for my little blog. 

Of course, as I began to sign up for the service, the main difference between Chartbeat and Google Analytics began to emerge: Price. From the home screen, I was told I could sign up for a free trial of the service, but the full service would cost me. Doing a bit more digging, I found what I was looking for: While a subscription to “Chartbeat Publishing” is intended for sites with 5 million monthly page views a month (for now, way above my pay grade!), there is a “Chartbeat for Everyone” service that costs $9.95 per month. 

Here, perhaps, is the biggest advantage that Google Analytics has. For my purposes (and, indeed, for the purposes of most individuals who just have a blog and want to see who’s coming and going), cost is a critical factor. Put simply, I’m not making any money off this and, even if I do make money off of this blog one day, it will likely just result in a bit of spending money here or there. Could I justify $10 per month to spend on my blog? Well, it depends on what the service does. 

Perhaps the most interesting insight that I discovered while perusing Chartbeat’s site was a difference in how Chartbeat measured activity versus that of Google Analytics. According to Chartbeat, the software “counts active visits with pings every few seconds effectively asking each person on your site ‘where are you and what are you doing now?” Google Analytics, meanwhile, “simply receives data every time a page is loaded. From that point, until the next page load, Google is blind to what is happening on your site” (Why Chartbeat & Google). 

This, obviously, provides users with a very interesting data set. It’s worth thinking about what you could do with this information. Per the Chartbeat site, the platform also “listens for keyboard and mouse actions. So, whenever people are on your page and clicking or typing, we count them as Engaged” (How Our Code). This actually opens up a huge web of possibility of tracking activity. So let’s say, for example, I create a webpage that has a game on it. Maybe clicking on the game won’t take my users to another page, but I still want to see how many people interact with said game. Certainly, Google Analytics would seem to not have the capabilities to track user activity on an individual webpage. However, Chartbeat, with its ability to track user activity on an individual webpage, could give us more information.

Additionally, this should just, generally speaking, give me better results inside of the analytics page. Let’s say, for example, a user is on your page, then simply leaves the page open, forgetting about it. Google will register that you had one visitor which, technically speaking, you did. However, with Chartbeat, you can better explain the visitor’s activity. Did he simply drop off? Did he just take a long time to read your page? There are plenty of differences between these two types of users but, in the eyes of Google Analytics, they are treated the same. The Chartbeat numbers will allow you to better explain behavior and may, ultimately, turn into better decisions for generating content. 

While doing a bit of research, I also found an interesting blog from Fusion’s data team talking about how they use Chartbeat and Google Analytics that sort of explains the discrepancy.  The author, Josh Laurito, wanted to see how Google Analytics and Chartbeat measured average site duration. He created the following chart, which showed strong correlation between the two measurements.  


The one outlier is, obviously, the one in the middle, which measured the traffic for Lifehacker, one of Fusion’s more popular site that gives tips for people in their everyday lives. He was trying to figure out the difference and finally realized something: “lots of users come to Lifehacker with a specific question, spend time on the page finding the answer, then leave. Chartbeat captures the engaged time these users spend on the page: Google doesn’t” (Laurito 2014). 

As I was further looking through what Chartbeat has to offer, one of the biggest advantages that Chartbeat offers over Google Analytics is advanced video tracking capabilities. As far as I can tell, Google Analytics does not allow you to see how people interact with your video content. However, Chartbeat offers a full slate of options for video tracking, including “insights such as play rate and lengths of views will reveal which articles could benefit most from videos (and vice versa) and how they affect in-video ad views” (Angeles 2014). 

Ultimately, however, I will stick with Google Analytics on my personal blog. The information Chartbeat offers users is certainly fascinating and I may one day be able to justify spending $10 per month to find it. However, for my own purposes, Google Analytics is just fine and, most importantly, free. I can deal with not tracking every one of my visitor’s movements, I think-until I get big, that is. 

References

Angeles, S. (2014, March 19). 3 Google Analytics Alternatives (and Why You Should Use Them). 
Business News Daily. Retrieved from http://www.businessnewsdaily.com/6090-google-
analytics-alternatives.html

How Our Code Tracks Your Site Visitor Activity. (n.d.). Retrieved from 
https://chartbeat.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/210239497-How-our-code-tracks-
your-site-visitor-activity

Laurito, J. (2014, December 8). Time on Site: Chartbeat vs. Google Analytics. Fusion Data 
Team. Retrieved from http://fmgdata.kinja.com/time-on-site-chartbeat-vs-google-
analytics-1668203169

Why Chartbeat & Google Real-Time Numbers Are Different.  (n.d.). Retrieved from
https://chartbeat.com/infographics/measure-differently


Comments

  1. Tommy MorganSeptember 12, 2017 at 5:33 PM

    A common trend among Google Analytics competitors is that GA is superior. We have numerous client at my agency that have switched from competitors to GA and the improvement in analysis is impressive (to say the least)!

    ReplyDelete
  2. UnknownSeptember 12, 2017 at 8:43 PM

    Great information here!
    Until this week's assignment, I did not know how much the monthly costs were for various web analytics tools out there, and if they even had a price tag. Google Analytics definitely has an advantage in that sense, but from your blog and the information I gathered about Clicky, it seems that these paid subscription tools have many advantages over the free version of GA. It all depends on the business though, as a free version of any web analytics tool may be just as suitable!

    ReplyDelete
  3. Mark TietbohlSeptember 13, 2017 at 8:31 AM

    Chartbeat is great for content management, and this is why media companies love it. The onpage analytics are certainly easier, but GA can do some of this through events. However, events in GA are perhaps the most difficult thing to master that most people want to accomplish, so many people do not go through the effort to measure on page activities (scroll, time on a video, hover, etc.)

    ReplyDelete

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