Over the previous few months, Amplitude has had many Google Analytics prospects reaching out to inquire about our analytics product. That is being pushed by the sudden sunsetting of GA Common. Since I do know extra about Google Analytics than most right here at Amplitude, I’ve turn into the de facto particular person to assist with these conversations. Whereas many alternative matters floor in these conversations, there are lots of questions that I’m requested repeatedly. So, on this publish, I’ll share the commonest questions I’ve acquired and a few quick replies. Please be aware that this publish differs from my earlier publish, through which I shared my solutions to questions concerning the sunsetting of GA Common.
How tough is it emigrate from GA to Amplitude?
One of many chief considerations of present GA prospects is the work effort emigrate to a brand new platform. Many organizations are stretched skinny, and switching analytics distributors was not one thing that they had deliberate. Google’s hurried and sudden migration deadlines have precipitated a lot pointless stress. Sadly, shifting from GA Common to GA4 isn’t the flip of a swap, so both method, organizations utilizing GA Common must re-implement one thing.
The analytics is probably going applied with Google Tag Supervisor (GTM) in case your digital property is a web site. In that case, you possible have an analytics information layer feeding information into GA Common by way of GTM. In that case, you should use Amplitude’s free Google Tag Supervisor template (shopper aspect and server aspect) to re-use all your earlier work and start sending the identical information components into Amplitude. All you have to do is about up your occasions and properties in Amplitude and add some new guidelines to GTM. We even partnered with BlastX to create a device that can assist you migrate your GA Common taxonomy to Amplitude, leveraging APIs from each distributors. Amplitude additionally affords a strong free plan to get you began, so you may leverage the GTM template and the taxonomy migration device to start sending information to a free model of Amplitude inside hours.
In case your group has a cell software, you have to exchange your GA or Firebase SDK with the Amplitude SDK. Because of this, I like to recommend beginning with the web site so you may stand up and working shortly, learn to use Amplitude, after which transfer on to the cell app. However the excellent news is that Amplitude started its life because the main cell software vendor and is persistently the highest rated, so you recognize you’ll be in good arms. You possibly can mix web site and cell app information into the identical Amplitude venture if you wish to see complete, multi-platform buyer journeys.
Amplitude has many different methods to implement that may usually be even simpler than Google Analytics. In case your group has an information collector (homegrown or utilizing a CDP like Phase, mParticle, or RudderStack), you may simply ship that information into Amplitude. Amplitude additionally has integrations with information warehouses like BiqQuery and Snowflake.
Can Amplitude Monitor Ecommerce?
Monitoring eCommerce is a main use case for Google Analytics. GA prospects need to understand how usually guests take a look at merchandise, add them to the cart, and buy. GA affords a prescriptive “Enhanced Ecommerce” implementation configuration to trace this. If GA prospects observe the express directions related to Enhanced Ecommerce, they will see a strong set of Ecommerce stories with the GA interface. One of many distinctive options of the Enhanced Ecommerce implementation is that it affords a method to monitor merchandise (gadgets) so that every product can have its personal information set. That is usually referred to as a property/dimension array. GA dimensions can not have nested arrays aside from the “merchandise” dimension included in Enhanced Ecommerce. This array consists of information factors corresponding to merchandise title, model, class, value, low cost, and so forth. The GA merchandise dimension permits your group to have completely different dimension values for every Ecommerce product. So, leveraging GA Enhanced Ecommerce offers the good thing about getting pre-canned stories, conversion metrics, and item-specific dimension values by way of a dimension array.
Are you able to monitor Ecommerce in Amplitude? In fact! The principle distinction in Amplitude is that we don’t prescribe precisely how you have to implement Ecommerce monitoring, and we don’t routinely configure particular stories and metrics. Whereas having stories and metrics pre-built for you is engaging, it additionally means that you’re confined to how GA needs you to trace Ecommerce. Amplitude has best-practice Ecommerce implementation options that mirror what you are able to do in GA, however we allow you to select how you need to implement them. You possibly can add extra occasions and properties than GA affords or replicate what you had in GA. Additionally, whereas GA solely has one dimension array, Amplitude offers an limitless variety of dimension arrays! So you may monitor sub-dimensions (properties) anytime you’d like! Amplitude additionally has dashboard templates that may replicate the out-of-the-box stories you’re used to in GA.
Can Amplitude Monitor Advertising Channels and Campaigns?
One of many blessings and curses of being the perfect product analytics vendor available in the market is that it’s simple to get typecast. Amplitude is synonymous with product analytics, and its capability to energy development for digital merchandise is unparalleled. However final yr, Amplitude, anticipating the forthcoming convergence of digital analytics applied sciences, added a large quantity of selling analytics capabilities to the product. Since I’ve a advertising analytics background, considered one of my objectives in becoming a member of Amplitude was to construct a “super-product” that might mix the perfect of selling and product analytics. We all know that the first use case for Google Analytics is advertising efficiency. Google initially acquired Urchin to indicate promoting prospects how their campaigns have been performing, so analytics round advertising and acquisition are core to GA’s DNA. The highest GA options utilized by entrepreneurs embrace:
- Acquisition Channels – Mechanically associating periods and occasions into the right advertising acquisition channel (e.g., Paid Search, website positioning, E mail, and so forth.)
- Multi-Contact Attribution – Assigning completely different attribution fashions to advertising channels and campaigns to assist entrepreneurs see which channels and campaigns ought to obtain credit score for conversions
- Promoting Community Integration – Enabling entrepreneurs to view marketing campaign metrics like ad impressions, ad clicks, and ad value for campaigns mixed with the power to view conversions from these campaigns to compute return on ad spend (ROAS)
- Ad Community Viewers Sharing – Enabling entrepreneurs to push a cohort of customers (audiences) to an promoting community for a marketing campaign or re-targeting
Whereas Amplitude had at all times excelled at analyzing web site and app utilization after the acquisition, we added Acquisition Channels, Multi-Contact Attribution, and Promoting Community Integration to the product so our industry-leading product analytics options could possibly be merged with these advertising analytics options. Whereas Amplitude was constructing these new advertising analytics options, we tried to enhance upon what was obtainable in GA. For instance, In Amplitude, you may have as many acquisition channels as you’d like. Maybe you desire a high-level and extra detailed view (e.g., Paid Search-Google, Paid Search-Bing, and so forth.). We additionally made acquisition channels retroactive, so any adjustments will retroactively influence historic information, not simply future information. Amplitude has additionally added the power to view touchdown pages, bounce charges, and so forth.
Amplitude eliminated the GA 90-day lookback window related to channels and campaigns for multi-touch attribution. In Amplitude, you should use any lookback window to incorporate campaigns way back to you’d like. In GA, except you’re within the particular channel attribution report, you may solely assign an attribution mannequin within the common settings space, which applies to all property stories. In Amplitude, we help you configure attribution for any occasion/metric you need in Knowledge Tables (Amplitude’s model of Discover). In Amplitude, you may see the identical occasion/metric side-by-side with completely different attribution fashions. This performance isn’t presently obtainable in GA4.
Amplitude imports Google Advertisements impressions, clicks, and prices. We additionally constructed a further integration with Google Advertisements that lets you view Google Ad campaigns utilizing the entire wealthy marketing campaign metadata. In lots of circumstances, the brand new advertising performance we constructed surpasses what is on the market in Google Analytics.
Can I Ship Audiences from Amplitude to Google Advertisements?
One of the vital in style options of Google Analytics is its tight integration with Google Advertisements. When you discover an fascinating phase of customers whereas utilizing GA, you may convert the phase into an viewers after which hyperlink your GA account to your Google Advertisements account. These audiences will likely be routinely populated in Google Advertisements. There they are often re-targeted or used as a part of bidding methods. Nonetheless, this functionality solely works if you’re utilizing Google Alerts. Google Alerts is a method that Google Analytics can establish nameless customers throughout completely different web sites in the event that they haven’t opted out of adverts personalization inside their Google account. However the usage of Google Alerts can have some privateness implications, and plenty of organizations (particularly in Europe) have disabled it inside Google Analytics. If Google Alerts is disabled, your capability to sync audiences from GA4 to Google Advertisements is not going to work.
Inside Amplitude, we have now at all times had a sturdy method of sending viewers cohorts to promoting networks by our lengthy checklist of accomplice integrations. This performance can create cohorts of customers and sync them to Google Advertisements. You possibly can hyperlink Amplitude to your Google Advertisements account and select the ID to attach Amplitude customers to the identical customers in Google Advertisements. This linking is often carried out utilizing a hashed e-mail deal with, a cell promoting ID, or a CRM/buyer ID. As soon as the consumer ID hyperlink is established, cohorts of customers will likely be synced to Google Advertisements and used there like every other Google Ad viewers.
One other factor to notice is that Amplitude can sync cohorts of customers to many promoting platforms, not simply Google Advertisements. Google Analytics primarily sends audiences to Google Advertisements, however it doesn’t make it simple to sync audiences to different promoting networks.
Does Amplitude Have Built-in Experimentation Capabilities?
The Google Analytics neighborhood was lately stunned to study that Google is shutting down its free experimentation/testing platform, Google Optimize. Most digital analysts perceive there’s a tight relationship between performing digital evaluation and experimentation. Analysts discover alternatives within the information after which use experimentation to see if these alternatives result in elevated engagement or conversion. Then when working experiments or assessments, they use analytics to measure the influence. These two applied sciences have a symbiotic relationship that may assist energy digital product development.
Amplitude launched its experimentation product two years in the past and is absolutely built-in with the analytics product. Amplitude Experiment affords characteristic flagging, A/B testing, and all different experimentation options you’ll anticipate. Whereas Amplitude Experiment isn’t free, its integration with Amplitude Analytics creates a synergistic impact for product development.
Does Amplitude Scale? Have Knowledge Cardinality Points?
Despite the fact that Google Analytics is a part of Google, which has among the finest know-how, GA isn’t identified for its scalability or pace. GA has lengthy been identified for information sampling, limitations on metrics and dimensions, and different reporting limitations. Throughout the GA4 interface, there are some unusual limitations:
Keep in mind that these are simply some of the GA4 limitations and that a lot of the figures above are for the paid model of GA4 (limits on the free model are even worse)! Due to this, many high-volume web sites/apps want to make use of merchandise like Amplitude. Amplitude purchasers like Sq., PayPal, and Doordash have information volumes that GA would by no means be capable of deal with. Amplitude’s information question system was purpose-built to ship unsampled information in real-time.
GA advises that you just carry out extra complicated queries utilizing BigQuery or Looker Studio to beat these limitations. Because of this on a regular basis information customers should learn to use the GA predefined stories, however after they hit a restrict there, learn to use the Discover interface, and after they hit limits there, learn to use BigQuery (which requires SQL) or Looker Studio (which requires BI experience). Whereas which may be okay for the devoted digital analytics group, that looks as if quite a bit to ask of informal information customers, on a regular basis entrepreneurs, and product groups. In some circumstances, former GA purchasers have informed us their customers unknowingly ran queries in BigQuery that resulted in costly, unplanned payments!
Amplitude has one interface that handles reporting from basic to super-complex questions. When you at all times have the choice of sending your information to BigQuery, Snowflake, or every other information warehouse, Amplitude customers can do nearly something they want proper inside the interface. And Amplitude doesn’t cost for queries or restrict the variety of stories that may be run. Amplitude removes most of the limitations talked about above, and in terms of scalability and cardinality, Amplitude can tackle information units of just about any measurement.
What About Privateness and GDPR?
Once I communicate to European organizations, GDPR comes up usually. Google has come underneath fireplace for privateness regulation in a number of European international locations, and a few have even deemed GA “unlawful” in its present type. I keep away from discussing privateness laws and like to defer these inquiries to our privateness officer and webpage. Nonetheless, I can say that Amplitude has a European information middle (based mostly in Germany), which helps preserve EU information from being transmitted to the US.
What Does Amplitude Do this GA Does Not?
Whereas a lot of the questions I obtain are folks probing to see if they might lose something in the event that they migrated to Amplitude, I’m often requested what Amplitude affords they haven’t had with GA. Fortuitously or sadly, that may be a comparatively lengthy checklist. I plan to spend a while documenting this extra sooner or later, however as a teaser, listed below are a few of my favorites:
- Collaboration/Knowledge Storytelling – Amplitude has tremendously emphasised making digital analytics a group sport. We allow this by offering a spot inside the product to share movies, pictures, charts, graphs, wealthy textual content, and annotations – multi function easy-to-read interface referred to as Notebooks. Notebooks are like Confluence pages inside our product, the place every thing associated to an evaluation lives in a single place. We’ve Areas, a set of all evaluation artifacts for a venture or a group. And all Amplitude stories/dashboards have inline dialogue threads so group members can share their ideas in step with the evaluation. We even have native integrations with Slack, Jira, Notion, and Miro for groups that leverage these instruments.
- Conversion Funnels – Amplitude’s conversion funnels are second to none! They carry a lot energy to conversion evaluation. Whereas GA has conversion funnels, there’s a lot extra you are able to do with Amplitude conversion funnels (you may see a comparability right here). Amplitude’s conversion funnels additionally apply machine studying to assist information you thru the occasions inflicting funnel conversion or drop-off. As soon as you employ Amplitude conversion funnels, it’s arduous to return to what’s obtainable in GA!
- Retention Reporting – In GA, there are some basic retention stories. They help you view what number of customers returned after X variety of days, weeks, or months. You can too apply segments to those stories. However in Amplitude, retention reporting is taken to an entire new stage. Amplitude has a Lifecycle report that exhibits new, present, energetic, and dormant customers. As well as, Amplitude affords superior N-Day retention, unbounded retention, retention traits over time, and plenty of extra. There are 20+ permutations of retention stories that in GA must be manually recreated by way of SQL in BigQuery. Amplitude places the ability of superior retention in an interface that information customers of any stage can use.
- Knowledge Governance – In Amplitude, we take information governance significantly! A lot in order that we acquired a whole information governance firm and built-in it into our product. In Amplitude, it’s simple to see your full monitoring plan, spot information high quality points, monitor information spikes and gaps, and so forth. Amplitude prevents customers from creating duplicate segments and metrics in order that they don’t proliferate and litter your analytics implementation. Amplitude’s information governance options make it simple to mix occasions and properties and repair any information errors with out re-implementing them. Amplitude additionally offers significantly better debugging instruments than GA (no extra having to hunt and end up in Debug!). We additionally provide strict management over occasions and properties, and unplanned/rejected occasions don’t rely towards your consumption!
- Consumer Profile and Profile API – Amplitude offers a consumer profile for every identified and nameless consumer. This consumer profile exhibits all identified attributes of the consumer and their full occasion stream. Whereas GA lets you view consumer occasions in Debug mode, Amplitude’s consumer profile offers all consumer occasion historical past and the properties related to every occasion. As well as, utilizing the Amplitude Id API, you may enrich the Amplitude consumer profile of any consumer. Whether or not including buyer attributes out of your CRM system or information warehouse, you may complement the information collected on the net and cell with different buyer information. That is particularly helpful in circumstances the place chances are you’ll need to monitor PII however can not accomplish that in JavaScript or the SDK as a result of privateness laws. As soon as consumer profiles have been enriched, analytics stories can use any added information factors. For instance, you may add the variety of youngsters every buyer has and later examine a conversion funnel for individuals who do and wouldn’t have youngsters. The chances are infinite.
- Direct Buyer Assist – Google Analytics defers coaching and assist to companions. Normally, you can’t discuss on to Google when you’ve got a product problem. At Amplitude, we provide direct assist to paying prospects and supply on-demand assist to these utilizing our free merchandise. Paying prospects are assigned a buyer success supervisor who meets with purchasers frequently to make sure they’re profitable with our merchandise. Amplitude additionally offers on-demand product coaching and affords dwell courses if wanted. And our product group loves to speak to prospects who’ve concepts about how we will enhance our merchandise!
I might go on, however these are a few of my favourite product differentiators…
How Does Amplitude’s Price Examine to Google Analytics?
Whereas many Google Analytics prospects use the free model, a few of its limitations make them the paid model (GA4 360). For the reason that paid model of GA4 360 is often bought by a accomplice, there could be some variability in pricing, however usually it begins at $50,000 for about 25 million occasions (GA4 has moved to event-based pricing vs. fastened value for GA360).
Amplitude affords an identical event-based pricing mannequin however a Month-to-month Tracked Consumer (MTU) pricing plan with limitless occasions can also be obtainable. We additionally provide a strong free plan and a particular Scholarship plan for startups. So, generally, Amplitude pricing is similar to that of GA4 360.
How Do Business Analysts Fee Amplitude vs. Google Analytics?
Amplitude was lately rated larger than Google Analytics in Forrester’s 2022 Digital Intelligence Platform Wave Report. Forrester rated Amplitude as having a stronger general providing and technique imaginative and prescient.
You possibly can study extra about this report and our rankings right here.
