Hi Everyone,
As I mentioned in my introductory thread I'm quite familiar with Google Analytics. One of the reasons I love it so much is that its user friendly and easy to understand.

Unfortunately my new job requires me to use another 3rd party stats program (shall remain nameless) for now. There are three things that rub me the wrong way about this stats program.

1.) Its not user friendly
2.) It lacks many features
3.) It actually costs money!

From the bosses perspective they are already financially invested in this software.

I would like to convince them that switching to Analytics is the right choice. Some concerns are:
- Google could inflate the figures (I hightly doubt this)
- They are already financially invested in a software package
- All existing stats are contained in the existing program
- They don't want to change now

As a ppc manager / advisor / all round nice guy . I'd really like to switch to analytics because:

1.)Its simple to use and generates nice looking graphs on the fly (meaningful graphs of course)
2.)Its Free, why pay for something when something free does a better job?
3.)It allows you to separate paid traffic and organic traffic easily, saving me time and headache.
4.)The goals and funnels approach is much simpler to set up and understand with analytics.
5.)It doesn't use confusing syntax to explain traffic (hard to explain without going into more detail).

I guess in summary Google offers much more flexibility and it is easier to plug it into the Adwords account. I can also output reports into nice looking pdf's and the graphs are easier to understand.
Analytics will save me lots of headache and time spent learning a new package.

However so far proving all this and showing them the money is difficult. Any advice?

Maybe show the boss a demo of it running on another website. Then he can see it in action and you can explain all the pros. You could also try setting it up as a second additional tracker on the same website and compare them and the results.

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MGS Web Design - Web Design Kildare, Web Design Ireland

The current stats package...is that a process on the server or does it use JS on each page to collect data? Maybe page rendering is a concern for your boss?

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blog | Geansaí Gorm - Written entirely in, awful, Irish! | Me on Blue Jumpers
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I'd just drop GA in anyway and have it collect data for a couple of months before approaching him again. Show him a comparison of live data then. I have some sites with 3 different stats programs in use - each with their different pros and cons.

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David Behan
Web Design | Mortgages | Memorial Websites | Digital Printing | Golf Holidays Portugal | Conservatories

Nameless for any particular reason ? curious which one it is ... and why you'd pay as you've said ... you want to move to google analytics ...

I've used firestats / analytics / have a mint / awstats and a few other server side ones ..
Personally I don't see the need for much more than analytics
(yes its obvious I'm not an seo expert)
Will be checking out webtrends over the next little while though

I'd recommend doing this first and then asking to run it in conjunction with the other as Tom said.
Showing things like the location of visitors and so on (it really looks impressive to non techy people)

I'd be careful doing this without the companies consent ... its your job on the line after all. I've run into problems before .. having to justify why I wanted stuff installed (annoying very annoying)

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Yeah it's a good idea alright. They have in fact been running Analytics on one of their other sites, however that's a bit of an oddball since they are using php / Joomla whereas all the other sites owned here are ASP with a majority of ASP developers.

I guess it would be good to sit down and explain the pro's and con's.

I was asked today to generate a report and it took much longer than usual as I had to extract data from Adwords then the Analytics package and put them together.

Perhaps I can walk the boss through the process of the current system vs proposed analytics.

I believe it would be Javascript but can't say for sure. I'll try and find out.

What exactly do you mean by page rendering? I'm thinking along the lines of how the page is displayed, but neither should cause problems provided the script is compliant.

Several problems with that.
1.) I don't have access to the backend of the site currently.
2.) The site is already sizeable and takes longer to load than I would like.
3.) I don't know if there would be any conflict between what's running on the site now and GA.
4.) I wouldn't go behind my bosses back and implement something, just because "I thought it was the right thing to do". It's a good way for someone not to trust you.

I will however show a comparison for sure.

Only nameless because I didn't want bad mouth a product based on first impressions. It can do alot of the same functions as Analytics but it's a much more cumbersome tool to use. Lets face it were talking free / paid.

The only reason you can justify this IMO is if you are worried about what how much knowledge Google has about your business. Which is a justifiable reason to be worried.

I've also seen serious oddities in its tracking. According to GA the sales we are making are being made by a disproportionate number of phantom users, so I've reverted to collecting data using other methods, since GA is being so flaky

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