Reinvigorate: A smart alternative to Google Analytics

Five years ago, competition in the web analytics software industry was healthy and open. Then, Google bought Urchin and re-launched the software as Google Analytics. That’s when everything changed.

While there’s still some excellent analytics packages available such as Webtrends, ClickTale and Coremetrics, each are very expensive and most require significant investment in skilled analysts to extract and report on the good stuff. That’s why Google Analytics has risen to the top: it’s free and elegantly does everything most businesses need it to do.

I like many aspects of Google Analytics. The interface is well-designed and there’s a few killer features - being able to set up PDF reports that are automatically sent to clients each month is my favourite - but I’ve always been fearful about what Google is doing with our data.

The first issue is that Google obviously tracks all of the information from our websites to its server. That’s a given, seeing as it’s a hosted application (although this may be the case with similar packages). The question is: how much data? A little bit? Maybe everything. What’s to stop Google from tracking comment submissions, subscription requests or order forms? If it’s got the Analytics code, fair game.

Second, it’s logical that Google is tracking all of the queries to and from its search engine and our websites. This would, in turn, give them the opportunity to show advertisements specific to the queries. How do you think AdWords knows so much about what people are looking for? Surely, the company is using our “private” data, at least in some part, to increase volume and accuracy.

I could go on about Gmail, Google Chrome, Google Toolbar, Google Docs and all of the other free software the company makes in order to capture this information, but that’s a whole different blog post. Besides, you can probably guess what I’d write.

Simply, when it comes to free (or low-cost) analytics, Google is king.

The good news is, on Monday, a smart alternative is launching: Reinvigorate.

We’ve been following the progress of Reinvigorate for the past few years. It started out as a personal project and as these things typically go, not enough time could be dedicated to product development, so things really slowed down. We subscribed to their blog and email newsletter list but the updates were few and far between. After a while, the scene looked desperate.

Then, Media Temple came along and threw some serious money and brains at Reinvigorate. The development engine started up again and after a while, Reinvigorate had something to show. Subvert got a ticket to a beta version of the software and installed it right away. We’ve been contributing feedback and ideas ever since, as have many others.

Reinvigorate is better than Google Analytics in a number of ways. First, it’s real-time data whereas Analytics reports the day after. Second, it has superior click tracking with heatmaps, compared to Google’s rudimentary implementation. Lastly, Reinvigorate allows website owners to track individual users via the web interface and a desktop application. Google has neither.

If you use Google Analytics on your or your client’s websites, we’d suggest signing up for a free Reinvigorate account. Run the software in parallel for a few months and keep track of the differences between the two products. Be sure to read about privacy.

At the end, if you choose to stick with Google Analytics, that’s cool, but be aware of the above drawbacks. You may just find yourself removing the Google code from your website because Reinvigorate provides all of the same essentials…and more.