If you were to analyze and measure web data to have a better understanding of user behavior, web analytics is the instant answer. Across the globe, it is used to determine the activity and the typical behavior of a user on a given website. In order to duly perform web analytics, there exist many tools in the market that can support you to achieve the desired targets. Some of them include Mixpanel Analytics, Google Analytics, Adobe Analytics and Crazy Eggs to name a few.

It answers questions like which of the pages got the maximum likes, how many users visited that particular day. It is due to web analytics which helps us provide substantial insights of data and enhance the user experience for a website. Here in this blog, we see a detailed comparison analysis between Mixpanel and Google Analytics.

The Funnel Analysis

When the need is to measure how many visitors moved through a series of page views, funnel analysis is the best you can do.

While Mixpanel can create a funnel in a much easier way. You will only have to pick a few steps to create funnels. The mechanism used is quite flexible and the analysis of data that you receive is also accurate. It is also retroactive. You have the leverage to measure different paths based on your previous data and observe how fast people convert on the site.

Whereas on the other side, Google Analytics uses a customer to specify all the steps to deal with in a funnel, way in advance. Over and above, they do not produce as accurate results as the former does.

The Retention Analysis

This analysis mainly helps you measure the behavior of the new users – their consistency and how much do they revert. It also notes whether they come back at all to use the app or not and even if they do, how often do they frequent.

While Google Analytics provides a substantial analysis, however, the feature is still in beta and is not even a core functionality. Nevertheless, it does provide enough insight into small business and helps in decision making.

On the contrary, Mixpanel provides the best ways for retention analysis. This will definitely help you take a better picture of the customer retention in your website.

Segmentation and Reporting Analysis

For this, Mixpanel Analytics offers an easy practice of creating simpler segments by breaking an event apart by its properties. As a cherry on top of the cake, it also helps you create graphs of the reports.

However, Google Analytics does the same thing somewhat but it will require rather a greater number of steps to do so. Nonetheless, you should note that both the tools work quite well when it comes to segmentation and reporting. Here, you can pick whichever is best suitable for you, the way your task demands.

Real-Time Analytics

Most of the companies out there use real-time reporting as this holds a large impact on the overall business performance of any given company. While Mixpanel has a higher ability to update data within a couple of seconds, Google Analytics lags in some ways and can take up to 24 hours to process the whole of the data.

Google Analytics when compared to Mixpanel on the basis of speed, also takes a backseat. The latter is comparatively faster when it comes to data processing in real-time. However, for smaller websites, Google Analytics gets updated quickly for smaller websites, although for the larger ones it takes up more time than usual.

Core Tracking Analysis

On one side where Google Analytics uses a page-based tracking mechanism, Mixpanel uses an event-centric mechanism.

Google Analytics tracks the traffic used on your website by seeing the number of page hits you get and thus, gathers the visitor information. For this, it takes the help of the javascript code for accurate tracking.

On the other hand, Mixpanel analytics tracks the actions of the visitors rather than page hits. These events could as video surfing, downloading a pdf file or could be a click of a button as well.

The User Tracking

These days, a lot of industries track users instead of just limiting themselves to the pageviews and the events. With that, they get a deeper understanding of how they can monitor a user.

To store a unique customer ID, Google Analytics uses browser cookies. This limits the number of users visiting from s single browser. It fails to track the movement of the same user across multiple devices.

Mixpanel offers you the leverage to track individual users rather than relying fully on the users. With this, you can also create customizable profiles or just search for a specific user from the given list. On top of this, this is enabled to perform a cross-device user tracking – something which Google Analytics lacks.

The Customer Service Analysis

In the case of Google Analytics, you will get assistance with support only if you have Google Analytics 360 suite. On a contrary note, Mixpanel has exceptional customer support and provides real assistance at each step.

Nevertheless, Goggle Analytics is an active community group where you can get instant help from the top analytics experts. I guess, in this battle, Google Analytics will still win as it has a larger number of users which actively contribute to a solution-oriented community.

Final Take

Goes without saying, it could be kind of tricky to pick a winner of the two. Each of the tools has some or the other leverage over the other. They both have some unique qualities.

Having said that, I guess it would be safe to conclude that Mixpanel can be your go-to tool if you are dealing with larger scaled businesses. If smaller businesses are something you have in your hands, Google Analytics is it. I hope this comparison analysis between Mixpanel and Google Analytics sorts this. You could always rely on the combination of the two to get the best of both worlds.

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