Repository: gratipay/gratipay.com

Issue:
don't use Google Analytics
Per @buchuki.



Discussion:
And why not?

Short answer: Data privacy.

Meanwhile the user gives us their credit and bank numbers, emails, github & twitter profiles?

Heated discussion about this going on over here at PyCon sprints. I'm kinda staying heads down. :)

@clone1018 I don't think it's a problem that _Gittip_ has that data, but many people might have issues with Google having it.

Then I invite them to make a service that allows us to get the analytics data we need to help Gittip grow without fear from a big company. 

Piwik?

That could work.

+1 for removing google analytics and incorporating something self-hosted like [Piwik](http://piwik.org/) (free, OSS) or [Mint](http://www.haveamint.com/) ($30 one-time license fee) depending on the needs of the site.

Aw man. I was just about to do some heavy research for a school presentation to reveal the benefits of Google Analytics. I guess that's the difference between small companies and big companies? Implied trust?

I'm a big fan of GA, and it provides great power to the user - but I also understand the privacy concerns.

The easiest thing to do would probably be to set up a Piwik instance and use that. It's PHP/MySQL, and is roughly on par with where GA was 5 years ago.

Another option would just be to parse the server logs. There are tools out there to do that in a somewhat automated way (AWStats?)

Hmm, I'll still go through with my report/presentation but I'll include Piwik as an alternative to big data and big corporation analytics :P

Can someone elaborate on the privacy concerns of Google Analytics?

Well, I'm not really concerned for myself, but one issue is that you're allowing Google insight into your site traffic. That insight can then be used to establish a browsing history for individual users, which can in turn be used to target ads.

For instance, if I'm on Cabelas.com, and they use Google Analytics - there's a good chance I'm going to see Cabela's ads via Adwords on other unrelated sites.  Some people seem to find that creepy, to say the least.

Oh, I forgot to put this up here :P

I wrote a super biased report on all the good stuffs of Google Analytics. I'm going to create a presentation with some more balance incorporating PiWik as well.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1YbHwKe6XxP0yXNjIm9ThkBsPBSEdbGcMSNBlI2dHppA/edit

For my presentation I'll need to bring a prop with me. Chad would you like to be my prop? :P Classes are Thursday Nights 6-9pm. I think we start presentations next week (Apr), or the week after.

> Chad would you like to be my prop? :P 

@abnor Yeah maybe. :) Let me know what day you're supposed to present.

Also, did you watch http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i7FZ3-4ow4E? It relates to your interests with Gittip marketing (see #728 for context).

Woops, can't use humans as props. Never mind :P I'll record the presentation though for ya.

Sounds good! :)

Relevant to #691 and also #694 and alsooo kinda sorta this one

https://github.com/gittip/humans/issues/2

The idea of a marketing 'team' will, as the rest of your 'employees' are, basically be a pool of individuals with great ideas and resources.

Though, I am still headstrong about implementing a traffic analysis tool. (My report so far is swinging bias towards Piwik.) You'll see the full details of my presentation by next Thursday or the following :]

Thinking of #691

Inspired by:

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/25/technology/nasty-gal-an-online-start-up-is-a-fast-growing-retailer.html?pagewanted=all&_r=1&

"
That constant conversation with customers created a loyal following. Nasty Gal has no marketing team, but fans comment on its every Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Tumblr and Pinterest post and regularly post pictures of themselves in their Nasty Gal finds. A quarter of Nasty Gal’s 550,000 customers visit the site daily for six minutes; the top 10 percent return more than 100 times a month.

With Nasty Gal having made just shy of $100 million in revenue last year, analysts say they would expect a bigger audience.

“I would expect them to have a few million visitors a month,” said Sucharita Mulpuru, a Forrester analyst. On the flip side, Ms. Mulpuru said Nasty Gal’s conversion rate must be significantly higher than the industry standard of 3 percent. “It speaks to an engaged audience,” she said. “They’ve figured out the marketing tool. That’s the real story.”
"

@abnor Thanks for the Nasty Gal snip. Sounds like a stronger strategy to me than fast and cheap growth.

I agree. That's what sets apart 'small businesses' from corporations-they listen to their customers. 

For the record: I was using GA on my sites and it provides great info. However this got me thinking some time ago. If each and every site loads some resource from google servers (be it JS libraries, fonts, adsense, ga.js, anything), then google is able to reconstruct when and where I have been _across the internet_. And I do not want that.

As far as all the other "buttons" go, most of them are placed on a site by hotlinking javascript file from the provider. For me that means that each one of the companies in principle can get the same kind of info as GA provided to me as a site owner.

So I installed piwik locally and I am not putting up the cool facebook or twitter buttons on my sites. I also use a browser extension to block all known tracking scripts on sites I visit.

:+1: 

I have used both GA and Piwik and some others. While GA provides great info and Piwik definitely has less info, I grew more and more concerned both for myself and for my users and decided to ditch GA in the end. I generally don't use off-site loaded JS, not just for the privacy concerns but also due to performance testing showing that Google (or other servers) providing hosting for JS libraries, etc has a negative impact on overall performance.

Testing showed that the added DNS resolves, extra HTTP requests, fluctuating response times from the like of Google and others (yes they do have that),etc caused a negative impact that was greater than the negative impact of extra loading times/bandwith usage of my own servers. Just using what you need and keeping resources small is still the best way.

As for Facebook buttons and the like: I usually allow only a select few. Facebook I never allow because its a well known fact that Facebook uses its like buttons to track people. If you ever logged in to Facebook, afterwards they'll be able to track you using the like buttons.

So +1 for Piwik or no analytics at all.

Dropping from the Infrastructure milestone as non-essential to that focus.

Segment.io, while proprietary and integrating mainly proprietary third party analytics services, has piwik integration dropping soon. While it's not a solution, it might make the steps to a final migration that much less onerous. Would also allow us to pipe stats into multiple systems, so we could test-drive piwik and give the maintainers feedback, while still using another service until our needs are fulfilled.

Ref: https://github.com/segmentio/analytics.js/pull/193

We decided on it after all. >.<

Reopening. We can't pay for GA and we give up too much control over user data.

[IRC](https://botbot.me/freenode/gratipay/2014-10-29/?msg=24438811&page=2)

I volunteer to set up a Piwik server if needed. I'll reach out to Chad on IRC shortly to discuss details if necessary.

Thanks @lyndsysimon!

:+1: 

:+1: 

Piwik PRO starts at $65/mo and afaict is reasonable wrt user privacy. From the [TOS](https://cloud.piwik.pro/tos/):

> 6.2.2 Piwik PRO may collect data on behalf of Customer while hosting Piwik Software on Piwik PRO servers; this data is fully owned by Customer and Piwik PRO does not make any use of such data and do not share it with third parties.

Piwik trial started:

![screen shot 2015-03-12 at 5 43 46 pm](https://cloud.githubusercontent.com/assets/134455/6628867/62ebeccc-c8df-11e4-87b1-cfdc765940de.png)

I believe that anyone with access to the shared folder on LastPass should be able to access https://gratipay.piwik.pro/. Can anyone confirm?

Folks should do further analysis of Google's Analytics platform re: privacy concerns and keeping your data secure from malicious "non state actors" like big corporations who care nothing about small entrepreneurs or small businesses or orgs.

AwStats, and Piwik are great alternatives.  hoping to see more adoption of GNU in new tech and more web statistics analysis

I'm also partial to StatCounter
http://statcounter.com/about/mission/

...both sitemeter and statcounter also provide free and paid web analytics tiers, not sure how usable that is for an app or a web app.

cheers! 

@whit537, just tried to access, and it didn't work:

```
Error: Wrong Username and password combination.
```

I'm unable to access Piwik as well. I can get into our Piwik Pro account management interface, but not the Piwik instance itself.

Maybe you have to make actual users for the piwik instance

@clone1018 Yeah, I did make one but I lost the password. Reset now, with a second entry in LastPass. 

Try again with "Piwik (Analytics Dashboard)"?

Works now with the 2nd acct.

@webmaven Yay! Do you know enough about Piwik to say that it's adequate for our needs? Or would you need to do some evaluation vis-a-vis Google Analytics first?

Would need to do some evaluation personally (and I can't give you a timeline for that right now), but by most accounts I've heard/read it should be adequate.

Okay, the trial is 30 days. I'm inclined to go for Piwik. We barely use Google Analytics. Surely Piwik can handle our basic needs.

I'm ready to drop GA and start paying for Pwiki. Objections?

I subscribed us to Piwik. First payment hits in 12 days, at the end of our 30-day trial.

I updated http://inside.gratipay.com/appendices/finances.


Resolving patch:
diff --git a/gratipay/wireup.py b/gratipay/wireup.py
--- a/gratipay/wireup.py
+++ b/gratipay/wireup.py
@@ -325,7 +325,6 @@ def asset(path):
         website.asset = lambda path: env.gratipay_asset_url+path
         clean_assets(website.www_root)
 
-    website.google_analytics_id = env.google_analytics_id
     website.optimizely_id = env.optimizely_id
     website.include_piwik = env.include_piwik
 
@@ -372,7 +371,6 @@ def env():
         UPDATE_GLOBAL_STATS_EVERY       = int,
         CHECK_DB_EVERY                  = int,
         DEQUEUE_EMAILS_EVERY            = int,
-        GOOGLE_ANALYTICS_ID             = unicode,
         OPTIMIZELY_ID                   = unicode,
         SENTRY_DSN                      = unicode,
         LOG_METRICS                     = is_yesish,


Test patch: