Not ready for prime time
This is a cool idea. I bought it, and I'm testing it out, but unfortunately, it's not convenient to use, for the following reasons:
1. I like that I can see the active visitor count in my menu bar, but when I click on the visitor count, it just displays the application context menu. Then, I have to manually drill down to select the views/filters that I want to see. This is a pain. I realize you can right-click on the menu icon, and then it re-opens your previous windows, but it should open on left-click, or this should be configurable.
2. There should be an option to attach the window to the menu bar as a docked item, rather than a floating window.
3. Each time I right-click on the menu bar icon, it opens a duplicate tab in the window. Instead, it should just display the window, not create new tabs without asking.
4. The metrics dashboard is ugly. In fact, all the windows are ugly. This doesn't look like a modern, aesthetically pleasing Mac app. It looks like something that was thrown together over a weekend as a prototype. We need a pretty and configurable dashboard view, similar to the dashboard displayed by GA on the website. There should be nice pretty pie charts, bar charts, etc..
I know it's only $20, but honestly, I find it annoying that such a rough-looking application is being sold on AppSumo. It needs a lot more work before it's ready for prime time. Depending on the developer's response, I may or may not keep it. It really depends on his roadmap and his commitment to improving it.
EraApps
May 9, 2024Thank you for the review. I appreciate your feedback.
I agree, the app could benefit from a better UI, though it is fully functional in supporting it's main objective to present tabular GA data.
Something to keep in mind, I am a solo developer for this app which I do in my spare time along with a full time job and raising a family. So unfortunately, time is not exactly on my side. I created this app as a need for personal use and gradually applied various update requests from other active users. The main issue with this app is there really isn't a large audience or demand for this type of convenience, otherwise it might be a lot more attractive in more ways then one.
A couple notes to your points which may be helpful...
1. If you click on the menu icon (logo or badge) it will toggle the metrics dashboard (which auto-refreshes in the background). The metrics dashboard will only display metrics you enable from Preferences menu. If you right-click on a metric (or value) it will open a data view window. Within this data view window if you click on the hamburger menu (top left) it will open up the query report builder where you can select and view any combinations of dimensions and metrics plus filtering too.
2. Great idea, I'll definitely look into that.
3. The idea behind the duplicate data view windows is for if you wanted to keep the "snapshot" of data in one window, while needing to drill down in another window perhaps, using query builder, etc.
4. I can assure you it wasn't thrown together the metrics dashboard is actually quite complicated especially in building out the filtered views. Again it's basically just tabular data for displaying filtered data rows of your desired metrics. BTW you can drag and drop the rows for sorting anytime.
My roadmap is really dependent on user feedback, if I don't receive any feature request there's not much to build on. I would love to spend more time on the app and make it pretty, but the demand is just not there for it unfortunately. If you have any request please shoot it my way and I'd be more than happy to build out.
Currently, I am building out GA4 integration since Universal Analytics is dying on July 1st, 2023. That should be finished by the end of this year as they are still missing certain features.
Here's a quick reference guide to helpful shortcuts within the app:
(Special) = [Control or Shift or RightMouse]
- Viewing report data: (Special)+Click on any metric label or value in the menu bar
-- Expand report data: Click hamburger symbol (top left above "Total")
---- Filter (positive): DoubleClick on any table cell
---- Filter (negative): (Special)+DoubleClick on any table cell
---- Toggle filter (positive vs. negative): DoubleClick filter button (in Filters pane on left)
---- Remove filter: (Special)+DoubleClick filter button (in Filters pane on left)
- Viewing metrics dashboard: Click on website logo or badge
- Goto Google Analytics: (Special)+Click logo or badge