Taking a Simple Approach to Analytics ![rw-book-cover](https://img.youtube.com/vi/g6xLg0zUXN0/maxresdefault.jpg) ## Metadata - Author: [[YouTube]] - Full Title: Taking a Simple Approach to Analytics - Category: #articles - Document Tags: [[video-notes]] [[youtube]] - Summary: Taking a Simple Approach to Analytics - URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g6xLg0zUXN0 Hi everyone and welcome to the WP Minute. I'm your host Eric Caravac. This week we're going to share a segment from my interview with Danny Vancouin. He's the creator of Coco Analytics, a plug-in that takes a simpler approach to tracking your website's traffic. I encourage you to check out the entire interview over on the WP Minute Plus. Visit thewpmin.com to learn more. Thanks, and we'll see you next time. So, like when you're building out Coco Analytics, like did you take a look at Google and kind of look at it and say, "Okay, this is where I need to improve on what Google does. This is where, you know, they fail and maybe I can make a positive impact." >> Yeah. Well, to be brutally brutally honest, um I didn't look at Google Google Analytics at all because even back in my freelancing days, um my customers expected me to uh install Google Analytics on their site. Uh but then when I came back to their sites months or years later, they never even looked at it even once. Uh or maybe they tried to, but they just couldn't find like how can I just see the number of visitors because it's not on the front page of your analytics dashboards. it's buried three uh pages down or something like that. >> So, I didn't really look at Google. I just um wanted one page that gave you an overview of what happened on your site. So, uh no custom reports, no multi-levelled pages, just a single page showing visitors and sources. >> That makes sense. I mean, because I I think the simplicity is what people are really after. We we talk about Google Analytics and you said as a freelancer people want you to install it and then um just that it's almost like an industry unto itself now that you have to be an expert at Google Analytics in order to set up the reports in order to get the emails sent out uh and and just customize things to to match what your clients are looking for. Coco Analytics is quite the opposite of that. You install it, you can see the stats right away. Um, our own Matt Maderos did a uh a little video tour of it recently, which we'll put in the uh show notes, showing just basically you turn it on and it works. And of course, the the pro version you can create reports and things like that as well. Um, but there's still like this this expectation, right, that that Google is going to be what's used. Like what what advice would you have for like a freelancer or an agency whose client says, "I really want Google Analytics." Um, but as a freelancer, you're saying, "Well, I think Coco is probably the better option." What would advice would you give to them? Yeah, what I would really like people to do is like maybe start out with something simple like Coco Analytics because it covers a large number of use cases like uh if you just want to see what kind of traffic you're getting, whether it's increasing month over month and where it's coming from uh which I think is covering 80% of small uh business owners website or even private users. Um, I just want the default to be something simple, like as simple as it could be. And then, uh, over time, maybe your needs are becoming more advanced, and you can always slap on something, uh, on top of Coco Analytics because it's so lightweight. It it doesn't get in the way. It doesn't take up any space, and it's not slowing down your website. Um, so it's easy to grow into more advanced uses. What we uh experience with Koko is usually when when the default is not enough, they want custom events anyway. And even with Google Analytics, you will have to set that up. Um and with Coco Analytics, you can now track any type of custom event as well. So even when your use case is more advanced, it can probably be done in a simpler way than you would have with Google Analytics. >> Yeah. And the other part of that is that you don't have to worry about Google changing their platform or making it, you know, more difficult. Um, >> that that's been a problem too, I think. You know, just the switch from Google Analytics 3 to four. Um, that was a hassle for a lot of uh website owners and especially I think agencies that had a lot of clients, >> you know, having to to go through that. um a plugin like Coco, you're just basically hitting the update button when a new version comes out and you know everything still works. Uh which I think is nice in an age where everything seems to be getting more complicated., Taking a Simple Approach to Analytics, YouTube, 01k9r1ywh77jje7dpztw5g0b61.