What is the difference between web analytics and product analytics?

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In a nutshell:

  • Web analytics is good for tracking and monitoring high-level website metrics like page views, bounce rate, and the top sources of traffic. It's a pre-defined dashboard, so it's easy to quickly dip into and find what you need.

  • Product analytics is good for diving deep into how specific users, or groups of users, behave. There are dashboard templates to help you get started, but you can build custom insights and dashboards to your precise needs, and use notebooks for adhoc analysis.

Here's a quick comparison:

Web analyticsProduct analytics

Dashboards

One, pre-builtUnlimited, customizable

Custom insights

Events

Pageview, pageleave, conversionsAny, custom

Properties

Limited, pre-definedAny, custom

Built for

Small teams, marketersEngineering, product, data teams

Use case

At-a-glance view of website trafficAnalysis of product usage and user behavior

When should you use web analytics?

Web analytics gives you a single, pre-built dashboard for a high-level overview of your site. It's about collecting data in the aggregate, as opposed to tracking specific interactions from specific users.

It can help you figure out which pages and products are most popular and resonate the most with people.

Web analytics dashboard

You can use web analytics to find out:

How many visitors were there in recent days, weeks, and months?

Use the web analytics dashboard to see the number of visitors currently online. Or filter by a specific time period like the last 14 days. You can also filter by unique visitors, pageviews, and sessions.

Web analytics dashboard
Which pages are people visiting?

Use the paths section on the dashboard to see which paths people are navigating to. You can also filter by the entry path, end path, and outbound clicks.

Web analytics dashboard
What is the bounce rate for pages on the site?

You can see the bounce rate percentage in the paths section in the web analytics dashboard.

Web analytics dashboard
What are the top sources of traffic?

List the top referrers, channels, and UTM sources for the traffic to your website.

Web analytics referrers
Where are visitors located geographically?

Use the world map to visualize where visitors are located. You can also filter by the top countries, regions, and cities.

Web analytics regions
Which device types, browsers, and operating systems are visitors using?
Web analytics regions
How long do sessions last on average?

You can use the web analytics dashboard to see how long sessions last on average over a given period of time, and also see how that duration is increasing or decreasing from the previous period.

Web analytics dashboard
How many people are converting?

Use the Add conversion goal button to view conversion rates for particular events or groups of events.

Conversion rate example

When should you use product analytics?

When you want to dive deeper into user behavior in your app and how they are interacting with features. It gives you insights into metrics such as feature adoption rate, user retention, and churn.

Product analytics example

You can use product analytics to:

Build custom dashboards

You can create custom dashboards to track all your most important product and performance metrics.

Dashboard example
Analyze trends and patterns in usage data

Use trends to plot data and find patterns.

Trend insight example
Find where people are getting stuck during onboarding with funnels

Use funnels to understand where people are getting stuck or dropping off in your flow.

Funnel insight example
Follow users along their journey through your product with user paths

Use user paths to find which parts of your product people are actually using, where users are getting confused or stuck, etc.

User path insight example
Look for particularly engaging features with stickiness

Use stickiness to find engaging features by seeing how many times users perform an event within a specific time period.

Stickiness insight example
Visualize user cohorts and retention metrics

Use retention insights to find how many users sign up and come back to use your product after trying it.

Retention insight example

Check out the product analytics docs for more examples and guides.

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FAQs

Have a question not covered here? Let us know . What is the difference between web analytics and product analytics? Web analytics is a streamlined experience for tracking and monitoring your most important website metrics. Product analytics is a more powerful and flexible experience for tracking your product. For a more detailed description of the difference, check out Web vs. product analytic s . How much does web analytics cost? Web analytics is no additional cost on top of product analytics…

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