5 Alternatives to GA4 for Your eCommerce Website

Properly tracking and evaluating site or app analytics is crucial for any online business. Google Analytics has dominated the industry for years and is still the most popular option.

However, with Universal Analytics sunsetting and Google Analytics 4 deployed, many organizations are now seeking alternatives to Google Analytics.

Why Do You Need a Google Analytics 4 Alternative?

Many businesses have been happy with Google Analytics for over a decade, but not everyone is happy about the latest changes. Google recently sunset Universal Analytics and required every user to migrate to Google Analytics 4 (GA4).

There are some significant changes with GA4, and many of them will help businesses better understand traffic, especially across devices and touchpoints. Yet, some eCommerce sites are now looking for Google Analytics 4 alternatives that cater more to their specific needs in areas that GA4 is lacking.

Having a strong understanding of the KPIs driving revenue and growth is crucial. Migrating to alternative analytics tools focusing on the needs of eCommerce, as opposed to an overall solution like GA4, can be immensely valuable.

Additionally, tools like Varos that give you real-time competitor benchmarking give additional insights into how your store is performing in relation to your peers. You can see below how our dashboard shows your results in the full context of your industry.

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Top Five Alternatives to GA4

GA4 is a great choice for some businesses, but others may find it lacking for their specific needs. And since a successful eCommerce business depends on analytics, it’s well worth exploring Google Analytics competitors to see if there might be a better choice for your needs.

For example, tracking the results of your CPM and CPC ad campaigns needs to include a variety of actions and touchpoints to truly gauge the effectiveness of your campaigns.

So let’s break down the top five options to replace or supplement GA4 to help better understand your eCommerce metrics.

1. Heap

Heap is an analytics platform with the intent of providing you with actionable insights at every step. You’ll not only understand the customer journey, but Heap also helps you discover how to improve it.

Leveraging Heap effectively allows organizations to have greater visibility into how they can improve conversion rates, provide a great customer experience, and improve retention rates. The platform leverages advanced data science to put your data to work, generating actionable insights.

Since it has a strong focus on generating insights, the platform continually aims to identify any friction sources that may be costing you customers. As a result, you can refine the conversion journey at every step.

One powerful feature is called session replay, which allows you to review specific steps in the customer journey to identify where they chose to check out or leave the site altogether. Combined with everything else it can do, Heap is a strong Google Analytics replacement that can help grow your business.

2. Mixpanel

Mixpanel is a product analytics platform that dives deep into audience behaviour and customer journeys with a focus on eCommerce products.  

Compared to GA4, Mixpanel provides insights into individual customer behaviours. GA4 provides aggregate data, which can be limited compared to Mixpanel’s capabilities. Mixpanel focuses on giving you the insights necessary to help:

• Create effective conversion funnels
• Analyze top customer flows
• Optimize converting leads into customers
• Generate on-demand reports for a range of metrics
• Automate specific workflows

Mixpanel’s eCommerce-focused platform provides more granular insights into specific behaviours than other options. Additionally, its tools are ideal for conducting A/B testing, detailed conversion tracking, and precise audience targeting. 

Another prime selling point for Mixpanel is its data visualization and analysis capabilities. Its visualization tools focus on allowing users to more easily understand complex data to find meaningful insights. 

Users can create custom dashboards to keep track of specific metrics that are relevant to their specific team or role. To add even more utility, users can also add custom alerts for when certain conditions are met so they can stay on top of vital information. Mixpanel is a common alternative to GA4 due to its flexibility and eCommerce focus, making it a strong option to consider.

3. Fathom

Fathom is a unique alternative as it prioritizes visitor privacy at every step of the process. The company’s data collection and usage policies are compliant with GDPR and similar regulations. Additionally, all traffic is routed through EU-owned infrastructure for analysis, which can be important for some European organizations.

While Fathom’s platform may not be necessary for all businesses, it’s worth including for companies focusing on consumer privacy and regulatory compliance. The company is also transparent about not selling the data your site generates to third parties.

As for features, Fathom provides similar capabilities as Google Analytics, such as customizable conversion tracking and usage data. The platform is also quick to set up and won't require specialized training to put to work.

4. Amplitude

Amplitude provides much of the same functionality you expect from an analytics platform with an added focus on advanced functionality for better understanding of customer interactions. The platform places a much stronger emphasis on the customer experience overall journey when compared to GA4.

Amplitude leverages behavioural tracking and reporting to help you see, in real-time, if you prefer, how customers move through your conversion funnel. The goal is to help you identify any friction points and bottlenecks so you can correct them. Comprehensive data visualization and reporting make it easier to cut through the clutter and gain valuable insights to help convert more customers.

The company also offers a growth engine that iterates through potential customer behaviour to help you find how to optimize the customer journey and provide campaign ideas as well. This feature is quite unique compared to other options, and while still in development (available in beta), it’s a strong indicator of Amplitude’s focus on helping your business grow.

5. Lebesgue

Lebesgue has a range of analytics capabilities to help you have a stronger understanding and greater control over the growth of your business. On top of many of the usage analytics features you’ll need, Lebesgue provides revenue forecasting and retention analytics to provide added value to your operation.

The goal of the platform is to go beyond usage and help you grow your business by understanding overall performance. Lebesgue equips you with insights into revenue trends, customer behaviour, and revenue forecasting.

You’ll also have data about the lifetime value of customers that allow you to calculate the true effectiveness of campaigns even after they’ve stopped running. The company strives to continually refine and introduce features that focus on eCommerce stores and their unique needs.

How to Choose the Right GA4 Alternative for Your eCommerce Site

How do you navigate the options we explored above in addition to other options you might find? Let’s quickly go over a few ways to evaluate each potential solution and adopt the best one for your site:

• Pricing and users: You shouldn’t base decisions exclusively on pricing, but it still needs to be considered before you further investigate a potential platform. Google Analytics is offered for free because it’s backed by one of the largest corporations on the planet, and it directly integrates with its ad platform. However, a GA4 alternative will need to generate revenue. Weigh the available pricing tiers and users to make sure it fits in the budget.
• Feature offering: We talked about plenty of features above, but you need to focus on your business objectives and need to navigate through them all. If a given platform has too many features you won’t use, then you’ll be paying too much for something you won’t use completely. Evaluate the core value proposition of the platform, the features that deliver the value, and how they can help your business.
• Integrations with other platforms: Something that’s hard for competitors to replicate is GA4’s thorough integrations with other tools, such as Varos, that allow companies to leverage usage analytics for a wide range of use cases. Alternatives may still offer integrations, but you need to evaluate how important your current integrations are before switching to a platform that may lack them.

GA4 is a powerful tool, but it’s not perfect, and other options might help you better grow your business. Keep your business objectives in mind as you explore different platforms to find the one that best works for your needs.

Gain Deeper eCommerce Analytics with Varos for Real-Time Benchmarking

Choosing a Google Analytics substitute focusing on the needs of eCommerce stores might be a great choice for your business. Explore each of the above options to see if they offer you something that GA4 does not.

Additionally, tools like Varos that don’t directly replace GA4 but instead provide additional insights are well worth considering. Varos provides real-time peer benchmarking so you can understand the complete context behind your analytics. 
Below, you can see how we provide a tiered comparison of other eCommerce sites in your industry to help you determine if your results are average, exceptional, or lacking.

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Are you ready to unlock more competitor benchmarking with Varos? Get started today, or book a demo with one of our analytics experts to learn more.