Website Analytics - haveamint.com or Google Analytics?

Question

Is there a comparative analysis available for Mint and Google Analytics which can help me decide which one to implement in my situation?

Answer 1

Mint is simpler, always up to date, and has a lot of plugins aimed at blogs and personal sites. Google Analytics is more complicated and takes a little time to understand, is updated daily, and has more features for larger sites such as marketing, e-commerce and such.

On my own sites I started with Mint, used both of them for a while, but now I'm pretty happy with just Google Analytics.

Answer 2

For every website I work on I only use Google Analytics. My main reasons:

• free -- for unlimited sites and hits
• no ads
• I don't find it hard to use and my clients haven't found it hard either (most figure it out within minutes)
• it has an API, so if you want more, you can add your own stats or even incorporate into the site
• for ecommerce, the extra tracking for ecommerce is great
• there are theories that it might even help your Google ranking (as they gain extra data about your site)
• a lot of people use it, so often the JS is cached
• easy to setup (I don't know about mint, but GA is a few lines of JS)
• connects to adsense so the stats can be tracked together (I don't know if others support this)

... and more.

Answer 3

Why have you opted for these two possible options in particular? There are a number of good packages out there, many of which are free and offer excellent services that may provide compelling advantages over the "default" choice, Google.

Have a look at this ReadWriteWeb post that compares 10 free analytics tools for starters.

I use Clicky on my site and find it to be an excellent alternative to GA.