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Author Topic: Universal Analytics and CiviCRM  (Read 2074 times)

mnt_schred

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Universal Analytics and CiviCRM
November 14, 2013, 09:48:52 am
As some of you know, Google has developed an exciting feature called Universal Analytics (UA).
UA is an method of linking website visitors to other systems, tracking user behavior even further. You can, for instance, link a website user to a CRM user using this functionality.
For a cool video from Google about this tech (and a cool proof of concept using a coffee and tea-machine) see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C27yMQOS8n0

For organisations employing fundraising, this technology will be immensely useful and can give CiviCRM an competitive edge over all the competitors. Furthermore, it is easily implemented.
Are there any plans of integrating this tech into Civi?

Coleman Watts

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Re: Universal Analytics and CiviCRM
November 14, 2013, 10:31:48 am
That's cool.
So what's needed to integrate it with Civi?
Try asking your question on the new CiviCRM help site.

Owen

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Re: Universal Analytics and CiviCRM
November 14, 2013, 10:47:22 am
Great idea.

Blending fundraising/event entries & web analytics is something I current use another tool for (pentaho), but this is a simpler solution. Even just having GA as a reporting framework for Civi data is neat.

xavier

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Re: Universal Analytics and CiviCRM
November 14, 2013, 10:54:30 am
Really nice.

I'm working on dataviz, would be awesome to mesh traffic data into it.

Unfortunately, won't have the time to dig into it in the next few weeks. ;(

this is where I am at right now:
https://github.com/TechToThePeople/civisualize
-Hackathon and data journalism about the European parliament 24-26 jan. Watch out the result

Owen

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Re: Universal Analytics and CiviCRM
November 14, 2013, 12:41:23 pm
Bringing in GA web analytics to Civisualise is another good path ;)

When I first started on my data blending projects I was going to pull web data locally to a SQL database using GA API in an ETL datawarehouse setup. The problems were the amount of data I'd need to pull in, so I switched to using GA API to pull when the dashboards loaded.

The issue with either nightly pulling in web stats or querying live is that you have to fix the web data you want to pull rather than having the flexibility of adhoc queries that GA gives you. If Universal Analytics allows a decent amount of data to be put in, then a nightly job from Civi would keep this flexibility (and allow possibly add an interesting flexibility to Civi reporting!).

Detlev

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Re: Universal Analytics and CiviCRM
November 14, 2013, 06:08:12 pm
Just my 2 cents as an activist working for privacy and civil rights:

Be aware, that Google is not well known for proactively securing privacy. Instead, our organisation rewarded them with a BigBrotherAward this year, for their ongoing work of global data hoarding (see: http://www.bigbrotherawards.de/2013-en/.hoard)!

I did not found any critical discussion on Universal Analytics yet, but this might come up soon, when the service passes beta state and gets more popular. Remember, how data protection commissioners especially from germany struggled with Google Analytics some years ago. And tracking users in the way supported by Universal Analytics really seems creepy.

If the service will be incorporated in CiviCRM though, PLEASE make sure that at least it can be switched off!

xavier

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Re: Universal Analytics and CiviCRM
November 14, 2013, 09:14:52 pm
Very good point Detlev,

Another question around privacy: what do you think about using the d3 cdn for loading d3 script+css? ie. I haven't heard anything about it, but it could in theory be used to know you're doing dataviz, or even inject something in the code (low risk, but real one).

X+
-Hackathon and data journalism about the European parliament 24-26 jan. Watch out the result

mnt_schred

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Re: Universal Analytics and CiviCRM
November 20, 2013, 04:56:16 am
Well, a piwik (open source alternative to Google Analytics) would be also nice, but UA is much more advanced.
And I have to note that all serious non profit organisations use Analytics in their core online fundraising strategy.

If CiviCRM would have UA integration and eCommerce Analytics features for membership forms, Civi would be the most complete solution for a lot of fundraising NGO's.

Detlev

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Re: Universal Analytics and CiviCRM
November 20, 2013, 05:09:24 am
Quote
And I have to note that all serious non profit organisations use Analytics in their core online fundraising strategy.

I strongly disagree! In my opinion, a "serious" non profit should not use Google Analytics at all. Piwik is a good alternative, and I would highly appreciate if CiviCRM would integrate with that one.


Donald Lobo

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Re: Universal Analytics and CiviCRM
November 20, 2013, 06:05:16 am

Ideally all such integrations will come in via extensions :) So, we can potentially have both a piwik and a UA integration and each site can make a decision on how important privacy is to their organization

I think the key is: folks writing these integration extensions rather than saying: "If civi could have this integration ..."

we definitely can help folks get started with extensions and can make changes in core if needed for better support

lobo
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Coleman Watts

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Re: Universal Analytics and CiviCRM
November 20, 2013, 07:11:39 am
Yes, this debate is irrelevant unless someone gets to work on one of these extensions. @Detlev are you going to start on a Piwik integration extension? @mnt_schred can you start specing out a GA integration extension?
Try asking your question on the new CiviCRM help site.

johns

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Re: Universal Analytics and CiviCRM
November 26, 2013, 04:40:46 pm
I think that as part of the free software community, and as a platform that tries to provide what orgs need using free software, CiviCRM adding dedicated support for Google Analytics would be a mistake. I think as a fellow free software project, supporting Piwik so that it can grow and have similar features without the downsides is a better strategy for achieving the kind of solution CiviCRM ultimately envisions.

Just as CiviCRM takes great pains to enable proper privacy protection for donor and contact information in its codebase, so should it decline integration with services known to disrespect those values and create major risks.
Support free software by supporting the Free Software Foundation: http://u.fsf.org/buildusup

xavier

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Re: Universal Analytics and CiviCRM
November 27, 2013, 12:15:29 am
Hi,

Cool, so John and detlev are teaming to develop an integration with piwik?

X+
-Hackathon and data journalism about the European parliament 24-26 jan. Watch out the result
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  • CiviCRM Community Forums (archive) »
  • Old sections (read-only, deprecated) »
  • Discussion (deprecated) »
  • Feature Requests and Suggestions (Moderator: Dave Greenberg) »
  • Universal Analytics and CiviCRM

This forum was archived on 2017-11-26.