10 ms·

Show HN: Alternative Google Analytics Dashboard

52 points by rajasimon 4y ago

lifeencoder 4y ago
Nice product. The UI looks quite similar(90%) to splitbee.io
- rajasimon 4y ago
  Mm first time heard Splitbee. Their site design especially the stats screen looks cool.
rajasimon 4y ago
Think of this like Plausible meets Google Analytics. Feedback welcome.
- me_bx 4y ago
  Hi, Congrats for launching something new. Here's some feedback, hoping that this criticism will be constructive. ## Trust There does not seem to be any information about which company or person owns GAClient and provides the service. There are no terms of service. The privacy policy is likely not compliant with GDPR, as there are no mentions of who the Data controller and Data Protection Officer are. Some of your target users are likely not to accept to either provide access to their Google Analytics data to GAClient, neither to provide their credit card information. ## Value proposition There certainly is room for improvement in the presentation of Google Analytics data to various stakeholders. Switching to another solution than the built-in Google Analytics dashboards is likely an important barrier for most users, though. Plus, both Google Analytics and Google Data Studio already have a multitude of free custom reports, which can be installed in a few clicks. Then, rather than switching to a different front-end for Google Analytics, aren't most target users likely to switch to another solution not owned by Google (Plausible, Matomo, PostHog...)? ## Problem solved Personally, I would rather see more serious added value in a solution providing insights on the conversion funnel (using either Google Analytics or other data source). Seeing just the number of daily visitors, country, device in a simplified dashboard is likely not to attract many paid customers (I might be wrong, obviously). Good luck!
darrenwestall 4y ago
I need to build this for my company for our reporting - not as a standalone product but just to show in our own reports how Paiger has delivered traffic. If you’re open to selling the source code to save me a job, ping me a note. Happy to include a caveat that it can never be sold as a standalone product by ourselves so it doesn’t compete.
- rajasimon 4y ago
  Let's continue over Email. Also, Custom dashboard is on the way.
- a5seo 4y ago
  If you have GA4 linked with Big Query, couldn’t you just build the dashboard pretty easily in Google Data Studio?
  - darrenwestall 4y ago
    It isn’t my data I want to view, it’s my clients viewing their own data inside my SaaS alongside our other reports.
navneetsingh 4y ago
Love this product, so simple and beautiful. I don't like to go to Google Analytics because you have to check multiple pages to find the information and it is little complicated. This tool makes it easy by displaying everything I need in a single-page dashboard. Will recommend everyone to try this out. Best of luck :)
prox 4y ago
Can you embed this view into a third party website? Like a client website?
- rajasimon 4y ago
  yes that is possible and my tech stack allows that. What kind of metrics you wanted to embed in your site?
vitabenes 4y ago
This was submitted yesterday too. Duplicate? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31205283 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31205283
- skilled 4y ago
  > duplicate It was posted by the same author, so he's probably trying to get some feedback on this project since the first submission failed.
  - rajasimon 4y ago
    yes you're right! I submitted days back but that doesn't get me anywhere. Also from this submission I gain lot of insights.
sixhobbits 4y ago
Is this a direct clone of the frontend of Plausible.io?
- zaik 4y ago
  It seems to be the counterpoint to plausible.io: > It's time to ditch Google Analytics > It's time to embrace Google Analytics
  - l-lousy 4y ago
    I think they meant in terms of design. It does look strikingly like the layout and design of plausible.
    - dewey 4y ago
      It has similarities but to be fair Plausible is also very close to the stock Tailwind UI components: https://tailwindui.com https://tailwindui.com
      - rajasimon 4y ago
        Yes Plausible using tailwind and I'm using Bulma because I'm comfortable in it. I like plausible and I have chosen their design language for GAClient. And I don't think anything wrong with it. I'm not cloning Plausible but creating add-on for Google Analytics in the same design as Plausible.
        nik736 4y ago
        "Design language"? It looks like a bad rip-off.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- robinhood 4y ago
  Actually, Fathom.
boredemployee 4y ago
could you tell the stack under your platform?
- rajasimon 4y ago
  Hey sorry for the late reply and I can tell you my stack. I'm a Django backend developer and I built this service using the Django tech stack. Frontend is favourite Bulma and I am using htmx for calling the backend API. And I have deployed in render.com. And also one more thing it is still in free plan and it can take care of the HN it seems.
heystefan 4y ago
Love the idea but your demo seems to not be working: https://gaclient.com/gaclient.com/ https://gaclient.com/gaclient.com/
- rajasimon 4y ago
  Fixed it. Google not returning refresh_token on consecutive login. In my code I used profile.refresh_token = cred.refresh_token for every login and that's caused the error.
skilled 4y ago
I haven't used GA in many years, probably 7 or more now. Have they not implemented something like a minimal interface in all this time? I swear it was so clunky and borderline annoying last time I used it.
digitalengineer 4y ago
It looks nice, but to me it looks like an alternative to Google Datastudio, not Google Analytics: https://datastudio.google.com/gallery https://datastudio.google.com/gallery
- picklesman 4y ago
  I was gonna say, this is exactly what I recently used data studio to do. Using GA as a data source I was able to create custom charts more easily in data studio. I feel like the charts in GA are much more constrained. For example I couldn't find how to do a stacked bar chart using different dimensions mapped to colors, which is very easy in DS.
ushakov 4y ago
i cannot think how this is a good idea you’re building a service on top of somebody else’s service, especially Google’s as someone who built a SaaS on top of Google APIs, i’d be afraid to build another service that depends on them Google will change and break their APIs more often than you’d expect, introduce new API versions and deprecate old ones without any backwards compatibility you’ll be stuck in cat and mouse game fixing every damage introduced by changes in the API and your software will break completely when they decide to deprecate the API in favour of a new one it’s only a matter of time until this product breaks because of Google’s API policies (remember there’s no warranty?) and your users/customers won’t keep up with that for long advice for somebody who learned it the hard way: do not build a product that depends on Google, or you risk losing your business
- erwincoumans 4y ago
  >> Google will change and break their APIs more often than you’d expect Spot on! Is there a full open source analytics solution (with web frontend) without such proprietary dependencies?
  - ushakov 4y ago
    i'd recommend Plausible personally using them as API to integrate analytics for my customer's sites main reason i choose Plausible is because it is made by a EU-based company honouring EU privacy values, meaning no cookies, no personal data collection and easy data export the team is very responsive and are happy to take feedback they are sustainable and make money offering a hosted service https://github.com/plausible/analytics https://github.com/plausible/analytics
  - ajcoll5 4y ago
    There's Matomo, formally Piwik. https://github.com/matomo-org/matomo https://github.com/matomo-org/matomo
- psnehanshu 4y ago
  The software we are building at my current job is totally dependent on Google's APIs. Is this something I should tell my manager?
mjhea0 4y ago
I love the simplicity of these types of things. It's a bit pricey, but things like this can save a lot of time. I built one specific to my needs, which integrates the key metrics I look for in both Stripe and GA: https://github.com/testdrivenio/google-analytics-stripe-dashboard https://github.com/testdrivenio/google-analytics-stripe-dash...
- rajasimon 4y ago
  This is awesome and I like it already because it's developed using Python. One more thing you're calling all of the Google API in a single view and I believe that will take quite some time to load. I have used htmx to solve this. After the page loads htmx will fire the API call to fetch the template response.
  - mjhea0 4y ago
    Thanks! I do load the GA and Stripe data asynchronously via XHR requests. The initial load does take quite a bit of time. After that, I cache the results to the database and load from there first so subsequent loads are much quicker. Do you think htmx would help with this still?

52 points by rajasimon 4y ago

lifeencoder 4y ago

Nice product. The UI looks quite similar(90%) to splitbee.io

rajasimon 4y ago
Mm first time heard Splitbee. Their site design especially the stats screen looks cool.

rajasimon 4y ago

Think of this like Plausible meets Google Analytics. Feedback welcome.

me_bx 4y ago
Hi, Congrats for launching something new. Here's some feedback, hoping that this criticism will be constructive. ## Trust There does not seem to be any information about which company or person owns GAClient and provides the service. There are no terms of service. The privacy policy is likely not compliant with GDPR, as there are no mentions of who the Data controller and Data Protection Officer are. Some of your target users are likely not to accept to either provide access to their Google Analytics data to GAClient, neither to provide their credit card information. ## Value proposition There certainly is room for improvement in the presentation of Google Analytics data to various stakeholders. Switching to another solution than the built-in Google Analytics dashboards is likely an important barrier for most users, though. Plus, both Google Analytics and Google Data Studio already have a multitude of free custom reports, which can be installed in a few clicks. Then, rather than switching to a different front-end for Google Analytics, aren't most target users likely to switch to another solution not owned by Google (Plausible, Matomo, PostHog...)? ## Problem solved Personally, I would rather see more serious added value in a solution providing insights on the conversion funnel (using either Google Analytics or other data source). Seeing just the number of daily visitors, country, device in a simplified dashboard is likely not to attract many paid customers (I might be wrong, obviously). Good luck!

darrenwestall 4y ago

I need to build this for my company for our reporting - not as a standalone product but just to show in our own reports how Paiger has delivered traffic. If you’re open to selling the source code to save me a job, ping me a note. Happy to include a caveat that it can never be sold as a standalone product by ourselves so it doesn’t compete.

rajasimon 4y ago
Let's continue over Email. Also, Custom dashboard is on the way.
a5seo 4y ago
If you have GA4 linked with Big Query, couldn’t you just build the dashboard pretty easily in Google Data Studio?
- darrenwestall 4y ago
  It isn’t my data I want to view, it’s my clients viewing their own data inside my SaaS alongside our other reports.

navneetsingh 4y ago

Love this product, so simple and beautiful. I don't like to go to Google Analytics because you have to check multiple pages to find the information and it is little complicated. This tool makes it easy by displaying everything I need in a single-page dashboard. Will recommend everyone to try this out. Best of luck :)

prox 4y ago

Can you embed this view into a third party website? Like a client website?

rajasimon 4y ago
yes that is possible and my tech stack allows that. What kind of metrics you wanted to embed in your site?

vitabenes 4y ago

This was submitted yesterday too. Duplicate? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31205283 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31205283

skilled 4y ago
> duplicate It was posted by the same author, so he's probably trying to get some feedback on this project since the first submission failed.
- rajasimon 4y ago
  yes you're right! I submitted days back but that doesn't get me anywhere. Also from this submission I gain lot of insights.

sixhobbits 4y ago

Is this a direct clone of the frontend of Plausible.io?

zaik 4y ago
It seems to be the counterpoint to plausible.io: > It's time to ditch Google Analytics > It's time to embrace Google Analytics
- l-lousy 4y ago
  I think they meant in terms of design. It does look strikingly like the layout and design of plausible.
  - dewey 4y ago
    It has similarities but to be fair Plausible is also very close to the stock Tailwind UI components: https://tailwindui.com https://tailwindui.com
    - rajasimon 4y ago
      Yes Plausible using tailwind and I'm using Bulma because I'm comfortable in it. I like plausible and I have chosen their design language for GAClient. And I don't think anything wrong with it. I'm not cloning Plausible but creating add-on for Google Analytics in the same design as Plausible.
      - nik736 4y ago
        "Design language"? It looks like a bad rip-off.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
robinhood 4y ago
Actually, Fathom.

boredemployee 4y ago

could you tell the stack under your platform?

rajasimon 4y ago
Hey sorry for the late reply and I can tell you my stack. I'm a Django backend developer and I built this service using the Django tech stack. Frontend is favourite Bulma and I am using htmx for calling the backend API. And I have deployed in render.com. And also one more thing it is still in free plan and it can take care of the HN it seems.

heystefan 4y ago

Love the idea but your demo seems to not be working: https://gaclient.com/gaclient.com/ https://gaclient.com/gaclient.com/

rajasimon 4y ago
Fixed it. Google not returning refresh_token on consecutive login. In my code I used profile.refresh_token = cred.refresh_token for every login and that's caused the error.

skilled 4y ago

I haven't used GA in many years, probably 7 or more now. Have they not implemented something like a minimal interface in all this time? I swear it was so clunky and borderline annoying last time I used it.

digitalengineer 4y ago

It looks nice, but to me it looks like an alternative to Google Datastudio, not Google Analytics: https://datastudio.google.com/gallery https://datastudio.google.com/gallery

picklesman 4y ago
I was gonna say, this is exactly what I recently used data studio to do. Using GA as a data source I was able to create custom charts more easily in data studio. I feel like the charts in GA are much more constrained. For example I couldn't find how to do a stacked bar chart using different dimensions mapped to colors, which is very easy in DS.

ushakov 4y ago

i cannot think how this is a good idea you’re building a service on top of somebody else’s service, especially Google’s as someone who built a SaaS on top of Google APIs, i’d be afraid to build another service that depends on them Google will change and break their APIs more often than you’d expect, introduce new API versions and deprecate old ones without any backwards compatibility you’ll be stuck in cat and mouse game fixing every damage introduced by changes in the API and your software will break completely when they decide to deprecate the API in favour of a new one it’s only a matter of time until this product breaks because of Google’s API policies (remember there’s no warranty?) and your users/customers won’t keep up with that for long advice for somebody who learned it the hard way: do not build a product that depends on Google, or you risk losing your business

erwincoumans 4y ago
>> Google will change and break their APIs more often than you’d expect Spot on! Is there a full open source analytics solution (with web frontend) without such proprietary dependencies?
- ushakov 4y ago
  i'd recommend Plausible personally using them as API to integrate analytics for my customer's sites main reason i choose Plausible is because it is made by a EU-based company honouring EU privacy values, meaning no cookies, no personal data collection and easy data export the team is very responsive and are happy to take feedback they are sustainable and make money offering a hosted service https://github.com/plausible/analytics https://github.com/plausible/analytics
- ajcoll5 4y ago
  There's Matomo, formally Piwik. https://github.com/matomo-org/matomo https://github.com/matomo-org/matomo
psnehanshu 4y ago
The software we are building at my current job is totally dependent on Google's APIs. Is this something I should tell my manager?

mjhea0 4y ago

I love the simplicity of these types of things. It's a bit pricey, but things like this can save a lot of time. I built one specific to my needs, which integrates the key metrics I look for in both Stripe and GA: https://github.com/testdrivenio/google-analytics-stripe-dashboard https://github.com/testdrivenio/google-analytics-stripe-dash...

rajasimon 4y ago
This is awesome and I like it already because it's developed using Python. One more thing you're calling all of the Google API in a single view and I believe that will take quite some time to load. I have used htmx to solve this. After the page loads htmx will fire the API call to fetch the template response.
- mjhea0 4y ago
  Thanks! I do load the GA and Stripe data asynchronously via XHR requests. The initial load does take quite a bit of time. After that, I cache the results to the database and load from there first so subsequent loads are much quicker. Do you think htmx would help with this still?