Sabina Mierzowski Nov 28, 2016 1:03:21 PM 10 min read

Google Analytics and minubo Part I: Why not Compare Apples With Oranges

At minubo, we would like to clarify a fundamental misunderstanding: Yes, minubo is an analytics solution that allows commerce organizations to monitor and analyze different business processes. And no, minubo is not the same as Google Analytics because minubo is not an analytics solution ONLY.

"We're using Google Analytics. Why do we need another analytics tool?" – to find a response to this question which is asked so often, we have launched this two-part blog series.

This first article is devoted to a detailed differentation between minubo and Google Analytics. The next blog entry will discuss the limitations of the free Google Analytics solution and include the Google Analytics Premium version in the discussion. But let's start at the beginning...

Google Analytics - The Key to Truth?

This free web tracking solution has now become a permanent, and very important, part of everyday business in every commerce organization. But what knowledge is gained with it and how comprehensive is it?

In order to be able to analyze access and behavior of users on their own website, or in the online shop, and thus also to gain insights into the success of marketing campaigns, this solution provides quite comprehensive insights. The immediate user circle in a commerce organization is therefore to be located mainly in the marketing department. You could even say that Google Analytics is only suitable for the day-to-day business of a marketing manager. However, it is hardly applicable to employees from other departments or to the creation of strategic management decisions. Thus the user circle and the resulting knowledge remain relatively restricted.

The marketing universe with Google Analytics

If you dive deeper into the subject, the question arises as to what exactly this analytics solution can do for a Marketing Manager:

Tracking the website or online shop.
Web analysis of user behavior on the website or in the online shop.
Provision of prefabricated reports that summarize the collected and evaluated data.
Monitoring of ongoing marketing campaigns.

But what else is possible? Is this functional spectrum enough for a commerce organization to work in a data-driven way? No, because Google Analytics shows only a small part of what is needed to make decisions across all departmental boundaries. Because the data that Google Analytics uses for analysis is just web tracking data – no more and no less.

At this point, we don’t want to hide that Google Analytics is able to include additional data in the analyses, such as returns data or other data from the order management system. The time and technical effort associated with the compilation and import of all relevant data of a commerce organization is, however, very high and is felt particularly in a high expenditure of personnel resources – which not all commerce organizations can or want to pay for.

Time to Bring minubo Into Play

First of all, we would like to emphasize that the minubo Analytics Cloud does not belong to the same category as Google Analytics. minubo is not an analytics solution in the narrow sense, but offers much more:

Reporting and analytics for the entire organization – not just the marketing department, but for all operational and strategic business areas.
Proactive insights and recommendations for the day-to-day business.
Integration of all data within the enterprise into a complete database across all channels.
Direct export of collected data into operational systems (e.g. campaign management tools).

Let's take a closer look at the data structure area. The minubo Analytics Cloud works on the basis of all data available in a company. It is integrated into a comprehensive Omni-Channel database – data from the order management system, from the eCommerce platform AND from the web tracking tool (like Google Analytics), but also, cash and branch data, as well as various data points around marketing costs and plan numbers are merged into a data warehouse. Google Analytics alone is unable to compile such a holistic data pool because this solution collects only web tracking data, which is only one part of the minubo omni-channel database.

minubo can therefore be seen as the core of the technical infrastructure that lies between the individual systems, linking all data together and making it accessible to all employees in the company.

minubo does not replace Google Analytics, but rather, it combines the data from this solution with the data from other systems and makes the tedious collection and integration of additional data records in Google Analytics obsolete. Through this merging, the data in minubo is also translated into direct action recommendations – you get "actionable insights", not just a summary of all data.

minubo + Google Analytics = New Opportunities for Marketing

This opens up new possibilities for marketing managers. Marketing campaigns can be planned more efficiently, and more effectively, for the entire commerce organization. If, for example, data from the order management system is added, campaigns can be designed to promote the sale of the right products. With minubo you have all the information about the individual products broken down into variants together with all the key figures at a glance – from sales to profit, to the sales quota, to stock turnover and storage range. In addition, tools such as the Single Product Pages or the minubo Topseller Report are available to check the qualification of individual products for a campaign.

With minubo, data from the pre-sale is connected with the post-sale. This allows marketing managers to thoroughly test and optimize their campaigns. Not only can the activity on the website and in the online shop be used to evaluate a campaign, but also, marketing managers can easily see the net profitability of their campaigns. How many orders for a promoted product have been canceled or returned? How many products were actually purchased? minubo calculates ROI based on a contribution margin – a much more detailed, and more meaningful, result than an ROI that is based solely on sales data.

Or just think of the often asked question: Do my campaigns focus on the right customers at all? Customer segmentation based on omni-channel data never attracts the wrong customers at the wrong time with vouchers, coupons, or other incentives.

And by linking all data from all systems, a uniform basis for communication is also created. On the one hand, this promotes collaboration within the marketing team and facilitates reporting to supervisors. On the other hand, marketing managers can communicate their successes and ideas beyond departmental boundaries. This can also be an advantage, for example, when the negotiations for marketing budgets go into a new round.

The Real Relationship Between minubo and Google Analytics

Let's sum up: A decision for minubo is not a decision against Google Analytics. This is not a question of "Either – or", but rather, Google Analytics is used by minubo as a data source. The resulting interplay between Google Analytics AND minubo enables the entire commerce organization to work in a data-driven way and make the right decisions every day. And the Marketing Manager? For them, the consolidation of data offers the opportunity to master one of the central challenges of their daily work: To monitor and communicate their campaign successes with the key figures that everyone in the company understands.