So, one thing that might be beneficial, at least I know I like to have it, is the ability to have my own analytics pulled from Google for the different marketplaces I’m in. So, being able to take our own Google Analytics ID and save it on the site could help indie devs who need to get as much data as possible about who is interacting with us and who isn’t.
Especially if we are to use RPG-Trader more for crowdfunding in the future, this would help us with setting up our marketing campaigns and goals with more specific analytics.
We don’t use Google Analytics on RPG Trader for privacy and data protection reasons. Instead, we use Umami for our own self-hosted, privacy-focused analytics.
We don’t plan on ever integrating with Google Analytics (or any GAFAM services) so we can maintain data integrity as well as privacy for both sellers and buyers.
We have a Reports page in the dashboard that provides you with detailed reports and analytics about your products, so a better question here is - what can we add to these reports that would help?
If there’s particular data you’re missing or wanting to see, we’d love to hear about it.
Another option we’re looking into is providing a webhook for key events that creators can use to integrate with their own analytics provider (Google Analytics, Mixpanel, etc.) without us actually handling that on the site itself. That’s a little more complex to navigate, given the variety of analytics platforms out there, but it will be the most flexible.
Oh, I was meaning to consider using a webhook rather than you all using Analytics on the whole site. Mostly because a lot of my other sites and work are already filtering to GA, which lets me run reports on multiple connections without having to do it manually. But I understand the security issue you want to make sure.
Personally, it is trying to get the analytics to make my own varying reports that I know I can do with GA that I am missing (plus right now while we can see the base site a person comes from, we don’t see the exact URL they are coming from… I mention this, and the whole reason I asked this, was because in my glance at my analytics here today there was a URL that it said my products got a hit from, from a site I don’t know anything about; and I wanted to see if I could figure out why.)
But as someone who has done marketing and effective analytic consulting for small creators, I can tell you the more analytics you can get to creators, the better. Being able to see granular data on which products are being seen, when they are being seen, and where they are coming from is very important for planning marketing.