To evaluate the effectiveness of your website and your tactics, you need a reliable analytics solution to help you track a visitor’s engagement across your website and products. The vital question now is, which analytics tool is the best for you?
Well, I have a solution for you, Open Web Analytics (OWA). It stands out as a strong and versatile tool that enables you to learn a lot about how well your website is performing.
Join me as I dig deep into the world of Open Web Analytics, exploring its features, benefits, risks, and how it can improve your online presence.
What is Open Web Analytics (OWA)?
Open Web Analytics is an open-source web analytics software that provides an alternative to analytics tools like Google Analytics while also providing you with complete control over your data.
Open Web Analytics (OWA) is a server software that anyone can install and run on their own host server. The platform supports tracking with WordPress and MediaWiki, two popular website frameworks. This platform also helps webmasters observe and keep track of their website’s traffic. Open Web Analytics can also track your competitors’ websites and compare their website growth with yours.
Open Web Analytics provides meaningful insights into metrics like page views, click-through rates, conversion rates, and others. Open Web Analytics is an open-source project, which means the source code is freely available for any individual or webmaster to make use of, modify, and improve. This open approach also allows you to stay in control of your data and customize the analytics platform to meet your specific requirements.
Key Features of Open Web Analytics (OWA)
1. Real-time Tracking:
Open Web Analytics’ Real-time Tracking provides you with the luxury of having unlimited access to real-time data on user interactions. This feature helps to give you a deep understanding of how visitors engage with your website thereby allowing you to make timely adjustments and optimizations.
2. Customizable Dashboards:
You can customize or design your dashboards to display the stats that are of utmost importance to you and your business. Open Web Analytics allows you to create custom reports, thereby making sure that you are only bothered with the KPIs that are important for your online success.
3. Event & E-commerce Tracking:
With this platform, it is now very easy to track specific events, such as form submissions, video plays, or downloads on your website. This feature is very important when it comes to understanding user engagement with various components of your website.
This web analytics platform also provides powerful ecommerce tracking capabilities. You can gather actionable insights into product performance, conversion rates, and the amount of revenue generated.
4. Content Analytics:
This Open Web Analytics feature lets you understand which pieces of content your audience is relating to or engaging with more. The platform helps you to track pageviews, bounce rates, and the time users spend on each page, enabling you to up your content strategy game.
5. Conversion Funnel Analysis:
This feature lets you determine any obstacles in your conversion process; you can also identify the problems, work on them and boost conversion rates.
6. Open-source Flexibility:
The open-source nature of this platform makes it possible for you to customize and integrate with other tools, providing you with endless possibilities for customizing the platform to suit your desires.
Benefits of Open Web Analytics Software
If you happen to be seeking an open-source alternative to analytics tools such as Google Analytics, Open Web Analytics (OWA) is a great option to consider. Having said that, I’ll quickly go through a few benefits that make OWA worthy of being considered.
1. First-party Full Control of Data
Open Web Analytics has always been known for it being an open source web analytics software and this means that you have full control over your data. Since you’re not dependent on a third-party vendor, there’s a lesser chance that your data will be used against your will.
2. Cost-effectiveness
Another mouthwatering advantage of using Open Web Analytics (OWA) is the fact that it helps you eliminate licensing fees. This makes it an attractive option for businesses, especially startups and small enterprises with limited budgets.
3. Reliable Community Support
The active Open Web Analytics community means that you have access to continuous development and support. Updates, plugins, and extensions are regularly contributed, so as to make sure that the software is up-to-date and relevant.
4. Privacy and Compliance
Open Web Analytics is well-known for its compliance with privacy regulations like GDPR and CCPA, thereby allowing you to maintain strict control over user data.
5. Scalability
Regardless of your business size, whether it is a small blog or a large e-commerce platform, Open Web Analytics scales with your business so it can handle high traffic volumes without endangering your website performance.
Open Web Analytics (OWA) Pricing
Since Open Web Analytics is open-source, you will not need to pay a dime to download and start using it. However, there are some expenses associated with Open Web Analytics. Just like any other open-source platform, it’s very unlikely that you’ll be able to get it operating right away. You will most definitely need to put some effort into developing and implementing it to meet your needs.
Open Web Analytics File & Package Installation
Open Web Analytics was built with PHP and JavaScript and it requires a web server & a MySQL database to operate.
To get started, you need to download the Open Web Analytics software from GitHub. After you are done downloading it, you can now install it on your server by following the detailed instructions in the documentation.
As soon as you are done with the installation, you can now log into the Open Web Analytics (OWA) dashboard, where you can reset various settings, set up goals & funnels, and keep track of your website’s performance. The OWA dashboard provides you with in-depth reports and visualization that will let you analyze user behavior and monitor the success of your online campaigns.
Open Web Analytics Alternatives
1. Matomo:
Matomo (formerly known as Piwik) is a full-featured PHP MySQL software program that is downloadable and you can install it on your own server. After you are done with the installation process, you will be given a JavaScript code.
You can also evaluate your user’s behavior with the platform’s features which include Heatmaps, session recordings, Funnels, Goals, Form Analytics and A/B Testing.
2. Google Analytics:
Google Analytics lets you measure your advertising ROI and also monitor your social networking sites and platforms.
3. Zustand:
This is a small & fast management solution. It boasts a comfy API that’s based on hooks.
4. Statsbot
Statsbot is a software that helps you take control of your raw data, providing an all-inclusive analysis tool for engineers, webmasters, and individuals who lack technological knowledge.
Safety Warning About Open Web Analytics (OWA)
Even with Open Web Analytics’ useful benefits, I don’t fully recommend this software because of its security vulnerabilities which can be exploited by attackers to collect sensitive & private user info. This happens because the PHP interpreter is unable to handle files created with ‘<?php (instead of the required “<?php sequence).
Nonetheless, changes have been made to this vulnerability since it was last analyzed by the National Vulnerability Database (NVD). It is awaiting reanalysis which could lead to more modifications to the information provided.
FAQs
How does Open Web Analytics (OWA) compare to Google Analytics?
Open Web Analytics is a free and open-source alternative to Google Analytics. While Google Analytics is a popular web analytics tool, it doesn’t provide the same level of data ownership and privacy as Open Web Analytics.
Can I use Open Web Analytics on multiple websites?
Yes, Open Web Analytics is designed to be used across multiple websites. You can easily add Open Web Analytics tracking code to all your web pages to start tracking and analyzing your site visitors.
Is Open Web Analytics compatible with any operating system?
Yes, Open Web Analytics is a web-based application, so it is compatible with any operating system that supports web browsers.
How does Open Web Analytics (OWA) handle data ownership?
Open Web Analytics gives you full ownership and control of your data. Unlike other analytics tools, Open Web Analytics allows you to host your analytics data on your own servers, ensuring complete privacy and data control.
Does Open Web Analytics use cookies?
Yes, Open Web Analytics uses cookies to track and analyze user behavior on your websites. However, it is important to have a clear and transparent cookie policy in place to inform your users about the use of cookies.
Is there a support team for Open Web Analytics (OWA)?
Yes, Open Web Analytics has a dedicated support team that can help you with any questions or issues you may have. You can reach out to them through their support forum or email.
Can I customize Open Web Analytics to fit my specific needs?
Absolutely! Open Web Analytics is an open-source software, which means you can easily customize its features and functionality to fit your requirements. You can even develop your own plugins and extensions to add additional functionality to the software.
Does Open Web Analytics (OWA) provide documentation?
Yes, Open Web Analytics provides comprehensive documentation that covers everything from installation to advanced usage. The documentation is regularly updated and includes detailed step-by-step guides, FAQs, and troubleshooting tips.
What are the key features of Open Web Analytics?
Open Web Analytics offers a wide range of features, including real-time reporting, customizable dashboards, conversion tracking, event tracking, ecommerce tracking, and much more. It provides all the essential analytics and reporting functions that you need to understand and improve the performance of your websites and applications.
Conclusion
Open Web Analytics (OWA) empowers you with the ability to customize and mold the analytics software, and seamless integration with popular content management systems like WordPress. It also provides a flexible solution.
So why don’t you rely on the power embedded in Open Web Analytics instead of relying on closed-source, private software? With OWA, you now have full control over your data and you can easily monitor your website’s performance.
