You probably are using one of the Analytics Services from Google API and wonder, how is the whole API benefiting you. We are coming from a full-implementation of a analytics framework under ASP.NET and know very well what to ask from a micro-framework like this.
First of all you need to trace your users along their journey through the application (GUI wise, data extractions, services used) but in the same time you want to measure the performance of the extra services called upon (connection to Google drive or another server, the duration of long asynchronous operations, accesses to database, calls on Restful services, etc…). Can you do it with Google Analytics? Well, you can but not entirely and then the information is presented in a nice interface instead of ready to be sliced on dice on your own server.
I am not complaining because, as with always coming from Google, you are the product along with any piece of software using their platform. In order to really understand what your audience is doing I see several options:
- create your own API and dump information to your server, allow other people to use it via Google model or by paying money
- have another service which will extract from GA (Google Analytics) the information you need and store in the envisioned format
- create an open API which will store&forward information in small pieces but send it to the back-end based on the user’s conditions
What do you do with Google Analytics? What are the main benefits?