Question

We have Chartbeat installed in our app which gives us live coverage of users coming in. However, one thing that Chartbeat lacks is the ability to display the total number of views a page has had…

So I was thinking of integrating Google Analytics. Is it fine to have both tools installed on our web app? Will this cause any significant performance impact? Any other disadvantages I should know about before proceeding?

Answer 1

There may be a slight performance impact, though its likely to be minimal.

Google Analytics, in the default configuration, only executes once per page load; Chartbeat, however, will ping the servers every so often to give a heart-beat to the user.

It’s not a bad idea to include both; they’re really complementary tools, and there is no conflict between them.

So, besides the widely cached ga.js, which gzipped clocks in at about 12kb, there’s not much more overhead, since the ‘ping’ sent to Google (via __utm.gif) is so lightweight and quick.

Google Analytics is designed to minimize its performance impact, so you really lose very little by adding it.

You can minimize its performance impact by:

• Using the asynchronous syntax.
• Placing it at the bottom of your pages, just before </body> (though even this will provide minimal benefit, since the asynchronous syntax loads Google Analytics in a non-blocking way.)

EDIT: Also, depending on your needs, you may be able to replace ChartBeat with the new Google Analytics Real Time that was just announced.