Visitor Analytics - compare to Lucky Orange

Lucky Orange is a tool that describes itself as the "original all-in-one conversion optimization suite". The company was founded in 2012 and claims to have about 60,000 websites using their package. It is indeed a multifunctional app that includes basic website traffic stats, recordings, chat, polls, heatmaps, funnels and form analytics. 

Lucky Orange is perhaps the most similar tool to Visitor Analytics in terms of available features. Both apps have a website statistics module, visitor recordings, heatmaps and funnels.

• The website analytics package from Visitor Analytics offers more detailed stats than Lucky Orange.
• Lucky Orange also provides chat, polls and form analytics features, which are currently in development in the case of Visitor Analytics. 

Similarities: 

• Visitor Analytics and Lucky Orange both offer the following metrics in the main overview: live visitors, unique visitors, visits, pageviews, referral sources, visitors by country, user browser, OS and device, plus a map of the visitors  
• Both offer the choice of filtering displayed data by date range and automatically compare it to the previous range, with red and green codes to show which stats are good and which bad  

Visitor Analytics Extras: 

• With Lucky Orange traffic stats, there is no data available beyond the overview, while Visitor Analytics uses a great deal of other sections in order to display more detailed stats
• Visitor Analytics shows bounce rates and conversions in the overview. Both are very important metrics.
• Visitor Analytics shows the latest visitors to the site in the overview. In this stat box, you can easily see the country of the user, the type of user (returning, new or converting), the visited pages, as well as details about the device
• Another extra in the overview is the top starting pages box (where users first land)
• Visitor Analytics shows top visited pages, based on visits to all of your pages. Lucky Orange is able to supply the same info, but the user first needs to tag the pages he/she wants to track. These pages and traffic to them show up under "top tags". The approach of Lucky Orange is not very user-friendly, especially for a website that has a great deal of content, such as an e-commerce site with hundreds of product pages. The user would have to tag each one of them, which would take a lot of time 
• Visitor Analytics shows stats about display resolution of the visitor
• You can zoom in on the visitor map, which can give a more exact location of the IP (region, city). Keep in mind that privacy laws prevent the app from receiving the exact location of the IP. 
• In general, the overview is more user-friendly and has a nicer layout, by any objective standards
• Beyond the main overview, there is data about visitors by hour and by days of week, which help you discover when users are most active. You can use that information to post new content according to that schedule
• Visitor Analytics also has an entire feature in the stats dedicated to UTM URL campaigns, which helps you organize data about traffic coming from custom URLs, as part of your campaigns. This is very useful when it comes to marketing attribution. (note: in the stats box for referrals, Lucky Orange can also track visits from UTMs, but the information is limited to the number of visits)

Lucky Orange Extras:

• The dashboard is customizable, giving the opportunity to move around stats boxes and remove the ones you don't need to see very often
• Lucky Orange shows an extra metric: average pages per visit
• The app groups referral traffic sources and mediums (direct, search, social etc.), which Visitor Analytics does not yet do
• The overview shows the language of the visitor's browser
• if set up, it can track social mentions of your company, but only on Twitter

Conclusion: 

In terms of website analytics and stats, Visitor Analytics is the far superior app. There are almost too many extra advantages to count, as you see listed above. Lucky Orange only provides an overview that scratches the surface, without going in depth. It instead chooses to focus more on other features in their very diverse package.

Similarities: 

• The overview of the recordings is very similar for the two apps. The following elements are common: a list of recordings, duration & time of visit, the entry & exit pages, nr of pages visited, the type of device used (browser, OS, type), the referrer/source, as well as the possibility to mark recordings as favorites and as watched/unwatched
• Both apps allow the user to apply filters to the list of recordings, but the way they are set up are fundamentally different, which you can see below
• The actual recordings player is also quite similar, with options for skipping idle activity and fast forwarding.

Visitor Analytics Extras: 

• Visitor Analytics offers a wider array of filters. You can filter by country, OS, browser, visitor type (returning, new, conversion), starred, watched, device, page count, duration. Furthermore, you can apply a second filter, based on entry page, exit page, contains page (page visited at any time during the session), does not contain page, or by funnel dropouts 
• In the individual recordings view, Visitor Analytics has an option to display all visitor actions in the form of a list: scrolling, focus, click etc.
• Visitor Analytics has a settings panel that allows you to choose exactly which pages to record, while Lucky Orange does not let the user make this choice, automatically recording all sessions if the feature is turned on. With Visitor Analytics, it makes sense to have such an option, since plan limits are based on the number of recordings used. This is more user friendly, as the customer can only record the activity he/she needs to record, without being billed for tracking activity that is not relevant. Furthermore, the customer can always delete old recordings to make space for newer ones while still staying within the limits of their plan and not paying extra.
• With Visitor Analytics you can choose to set recordings strictly for visits with a certain minimum duration (e.g. minimum 10 seconds). Again, this enables you to not waste resources to record irrelevant visits.

Lucky Orange Extras:

• Although it does not have all the filters that Visitor Analytics has, Lucky Orange allows you to sort/order recordings based on any variable in the overview. This sorting is a bit more limited when compared to filtering, as you can't really single out a particular type of situation.
• Lucky Orange also uses a set of filters for the recordings list, which follow a different logic than Visitor Analytics. The main way to filter is by using the tags attached to the pages. For example, you can filter the recordings of users who reached a certain tagged page and double that by applying another filter for a tagged page they did not reach (note: you can do the same with Visitor Analytics, by simultaneously applying a filter for "contains page" and one for "does not contain page") 
• With Lucky Orange, you can also filter by the intensity of the activity on the site (from "no activity" to "very high activity"). You can also filter by number of pages visited (organized in predefined ranges - "1-5 pages", "6-10 pages") 
• The overview of recordings is a little more detailed. There is an icon indicating whether the user typed anything on his keyword during the session, a variable indicating the intensity of the activity of the user, the number of sessions/visits from that particular user and UTM parameters of the referring link, if they were used.
• In Lucky Orange, there is a link from every recording to the corresponding heatmaps (if they exist) for the pages that the user visited. This can be helpful in order to check whether behavior patterns you notice in the recording are generalized for more users landing on a certain page. 

Conclusion: 

In summary, although the principles behind the functionality of the feature are the same, there are considerable differences in the way data is organized. Both tools offer advantages and it would be difficult to point out many things that one has and the other has not.

However, the way filtering is set up for Visitor Analytics appears to be more efficient. Also, giving the user the opportunity to record only what needs to be recorded is another advantage. At the same time, Lucky Orange does have a few extra items (like the "typed" icon), which can be useful in some situations. Also, the fact that they link recordings with heatmaps is another advantage in terms of usability. 

Lucky Orange Extras:

• The most important advantage of the Lucky Orange heat map tool is that it can offer segmentation directly on the heat map. Therefore, you can filter and choose to see a heatmap based only on a particular type of user or visit. Filter by: date range, behavior tags, referral source, referral medium, UTMs, type of browser, OS, country, region, number of visits. 
• Another aspect is that the heatmaps are linked directly to the recordings of the visits they are based on.

Conclusions:

Lucky Orange is the slightly superior tool in terms of heatmaps, thanks to the powerful segmentation option, which can give superior insights. At the same time, Visitor Analytics is a solid alternative, especially for situations with less activity and traffic. In these cases, the outputs it provides are of higher quality.

Similarities: 

• The purpose and basic setup for funnels is the same, but there are differences in terms of available options.
• Both link directly to the session recordings of the dropouts between levels (with Visitor Analytics, recordings have to be turned on in advance)
• Both show number of dropouts, as well as dropout percentages

Visitor Analytics Extras: 

• A very important plus is the fact that Visitor Analytics allows users to set up conversion funnel steps for groups of pages, using URL matching type (e.g. "URL starts with", "URL ends with"). This is highly useful in situations such as when you want to track conversions to any product page, not just a specific page. By contrast, Lucky Orange uses tagged pages in funnels, and these tags can only be applied to specific pages or to URLs containing a certain string. This limits the possibilities in terms of grouping similar pages in one funnel step.  
• You can add an expected conversion rate, to compare and easily see if you are reaching your goals.
• You can add a limit to the number of visits that the funnel is based on, so that you don't gather an unnecessary amount of data.
• The logic of the funnel allows for visits in between steps, without counting them as dropouts

Lucky Orange Extras: - 

Conclusion: 

Visitor Analytics is the better tool in terms of funnels. For most users, Lucky Orange will also get the job done, provided they don't need an advanced set up for grouping similar pages.

As you can see, the two apps have somewhat different philosophies in terms of how to set premium plan limitations. While Lucky Orange works on a monthly basis and records all activity for heatmaps and recordings, Visitor Analytics sets no time limitations, leaving users the decision on how to manage their data in time. Users can keep data for however long they want, keep only what they need and free up space when they need it.

In terms of pageviews for the website stats, Visitor Analytics offers higher monthly limits.

Prices for both apps are competitive, but Visitor Analytics is more affordable, especially when it comes to higher premium plans. Also noteworthy is that the prices in the table are based on 2-year purchases for Lucky Orange, while for Visitor Analytics they are for 1-year. On another note, Lucky Orange does include some extra features in these prices.  

Also of note is that Visitor Analytics offers a free plan, with all available features (with limits to them), while Lucky Orange only has a 7-day free trial.