Introduction
I am a big fan of trying out new online marketing tools. Piwik, an open source web analysis tool, is one such tool I recently implemented. Piwik’s clearly stated goal is to become the open source alternative to Google Analytics. In this article I will examine whether Piwik is worth taking a look at.
Note: There are plenty of excellent sites out there that provide detailed installation tutorials. The focus here is on Piwik as a tool for analyzing website traffic and its implications on the Web Analytics industry. The installation in Wordpress, however, was a breeze, and is now in fact even easier if you use the recently released Wordpress plugin.
Compelling Reasons
Despite its alpha release status, there are a couple of compelling reasons why Piwik is a tool that should be watched in the coming months.
- Data Ownership: Since Piwik is installed on your server, the data is captured only by you and therefore resides safely in your databases. This addresses a major concern of many businesses that distrust the mighty Google.
- Open Source: With the support of the open source community behind it, Piwik has the potential to evolve into a feature-rich web analytics tool. If integrated with the open source ad server, OpenX, Piwik would have a similar set up as Google Analytics and Google AdWords.
- Flexibility: Web analysts will love the customizable user interface and the ability to embed stats directly in websites. The open APIs enable flexible data extraction in multiple formats making data analysis a joy.
Implications on the Web Analytics market
The open source movement is catching on. Even Microsoft now acknowledges that open source is a major threat. However, it will take some time before Piwik (and OpenX) become viable alternatives for established businesses. For Piwik to really make waves in the market will require a feature set that is far superior to Google Analytics. Data ownership and the open APIs are a great start.
I will continue to run Piwik and Google Analytics on this site and stay up to date with new releases. Over time, I will run comparisons between the two services. Even if Piwik does not live up to its promise, I can only hope that the added competition encourages Google to add more features such as open APIs to its analytics tool.
