I am pleased to announce that GoSquared has become an approved analytics service by the UK government and is now available on the government’s CloudStore (also known as the G-Cloud).
What is the G-Cloud?
The traditional procurement process for government contracts can be bureaucratic and long winded. This makes it particularly prohibitive for SMEs (small and medium enterprises) to compete and so in 2012 the UK government launched the G-Cloud initiative.
Coinciding with the explosion in cloud services the government is looking to shift 50% of new IT spend to the cloud. The G-Cloud acts a bit like the Apple App Store; only services that meet the stringent requirements are approved.
This means that all government departments and bodies from HM Revenue & Customs to the NHS, the SACMILL (Scientific Advisory Committee on the Medical Implications of Less-Lethal Weapons) to local government councils can procure the plethora of innovative cloud technologies in the knowledge that they have been approved.
To add some perspective, sales through the G-Cloud framework reached a total of over £175m in March 2014. 60% of this figure was awarded to SMEs. The G-Cloud represents a trailblazing attitude to the way a government should use and adopt technology and we are incredibly proud to be a part of these revolutionary efforts.
Why is GoSquared a good fit for government?
Until last week, the only web analytics services available to government were the established enterprise providers: Google Analytics Premium and IBM. Don’t get me wrong, these are great tools but only in certain areas. We firmly believe that choice is always a good thing —particularly in IT procurement— and that the multifarious government activities and sites could substantially benefit from a range of analytics tools.
We’ve pushed to become an approved UK government provider because GoSquared is a pioneer in the movement towards increased data awareness in organisations. The days of having analytics in silos is over. The days where everyone has easy-to-use actionable information at the tip of their fingers is prevailing and this requires three core attributes: accuracy, real-time and accessibility.
Accuracy
Most analytics tools track visitors when they first visit a page, and then estimate time on site with averages and imprecise methodology. GoSquared is different. GoSquared pings continuously to check a visitor is still actively engaged with every pageview. GoSquared even ties everything back to individual visitors – so you can dive into aggregate data to see the methodology in our calculations. GoSquared also provides this data in minute by minute granularity. Other services povide up to 1 hour granularity.
Unlike other analytics services, GoSquared does not sample data, no matter how busy your website becomes. You can be sure that GoSquared is counting every pageview, every visitor, every event; your numbers will always be as accurate as possible.
Accuracy is the essential foundation upon which decisions must be made and with GoSquared you are using one of the most accurate services available.
Real-time
Working with outdated or stale information means decision-making without the full picture. Therefore to make the best decisions having the freshest data is essential and in analytics, that means real-time (the moment it happens).
Established enterprise providers, such as Google Analytics and IBM can take up to 24 hours to process data. In contrast, GoSquared introduced real-time web analytics to the world in 2008. Real-time remains core throughout our service and this gives our customers the confidence to make accurate decisions and predictions.
Accessibility
Good analytics is about taking extremely complex information and making it easy to understand. You might have accurate data but if the end user cannot comprehend the information it is fundamentally useless. GoSquared is designed so that deriving actionable insights is quick and painless.
What does this mean in practice for Government sites?
GoSquared can be set up in 10 minutes for a government site. It means sharing access for the whole department is as simple as typing in an email address (and revoking access with one click too). It means no boring manuals or unnecessary technical jargon. We provide a beautiful analytics dashboard that users can understand in seconds.
Should the department have an issue or question, GoSquared has a London office and telephone support comes straight from the team that built the software. GoSquared scales to handle billions of monthly pageviews and has experience handling the security requirements of large government sites.
And you’ll be safe in the knowledge that the information the team is acting upon is the latest and most accurate possible.
Finally, GoSquared doesn’t sell or use the data collected for any ancillary purposes, such as advertising. The data is the customers and the customers alone.
Are you a government agency or body and interested in trying GoSquared?
Please feel free to get directly in touch with me at hugh@gosquared.com. I will be more than happy to discuss your needs and if we’re a good fit. I imagine we will be.
GoSquared has completely transparent pricing; a rare characteristic in this space where the mantra of charging the maximum a customer can afford is rampant.
GoSquared is an excellent fit for any government body.
