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So below is some notes from a session I ran at Measurecamp London.
I wanted to firstly open up the discussion of having an alternative/ addition to Google Analytics.
| Google Analytics (or similar eg Adobe) | CMS analytics |
|---|---|
| Support. So one massive plus is the support, the community, the feature rich developments at hand. GA nearly always has an area in beta, its always listening to feedback and feature requests. There are an abundance of blogs, videos as well as the excellently ran google+ community. | CMS support is in place, but the reality is they will share time spent on development amongst all areas of the CMS. |
| Features. Metrics, dimensions, reports, dashboards are aplenty. | Most CMS analytics are a subset of the full GA list. A good list non the less. |
| Integration. Importing, exporting, connectivity are all standard. Its very easy to add custom dimensions (eg from A/B testing tool) and very easy to share data via the GA API | This area is pretty limited, however quite often whether it be pluggins or modules from a marketplace there is a solution out there. |
| Sampling. Most of us have the free version of GA and so our data is sampled and thus a subset of the full amount | With CMS analytics you often host the database where the data resides and so have un sampled data. This is a major win if you use this data for personalisation/ monitoring the customer journey as you get to see and respond to very granular data sets. |
| Filtering. When you set up GA you can filter that data from the get go. It also by default attempts to block bots. (TIP always set one GA view as RAW – eg totally unfiltered view. Then set a filtered view to your liking to remove “polluted data“ | Most CMS’s analytics don’t filter at the start, just allow you to filter as a segment. They do however attempt to block bots similar to GA. Without filtering we are simple mis-reporting conversion data. |
| Impact on visitors. By impact I mean can data recorded have an immediate impact on the user. GA has real time, using google sheets you can also report data on the hour. (Not immediate but within a period to react). This can then be utilised by content teams looking for trends. Great example is GDS monitoring search trends. | With the data being within the CMS, impact can be immediate. CMS’s can utilise this data for personalisation, optimisation and automation. |
The reality of the above is you need to use both GA and your CMS analytics. You would be foolish to omit one of them as together they give you a rich data set to collect insights and drive effective experiences from. Just one note – they aren’t going to match in key dimensions/ metrics given how they record data in the first place (filters or sampling).
Secondly we talked about bringing statistics/ data into a CMS editor environment. Think of it as gamification or intelligence. An editor is writing an article, wouldn’t it be good to give them stats from similar pages (engagement score, SEO ranking, best time to publish…)
Wouldn’t it be good to immediately tell the editor of broken links (to third parties) when they log into the CMS and edit a page rather than seeing broken links – in a report – in a separate document – attached in an email – that never gets read… This is where CMS analytics could add some real value!
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Web Analytics and Measurement 
Thanks Dominic, this was an interesting discussion.