One important part of being a webmaster is monitoring who visits your websites and how often. Such data is important is analysing the reach of your website and to determine how successful you have been in popularizing the same. However, such raw data is not really useful, unless grouped, analysed and reported in a way […]
One important part of being a webmaster is monitoring who visits your websites and how often. Such data is important is analysing the reach of your website and to determine how successful you have been in popularizing the same. However, such raw data is not really useful, unless grouped, analysed and reported in a way useful to understand the pattern.
You would probably have heard of Google Analytics for basic reporting. In this post, we will explore a few more such products for you to use, with the pros and cons of each.
This is one of the most popular analytics software. The basic plan is free and with loads of features, it’s the first choice of most webmasters. Also, the fact that it is integrated with your Google Account makes it easy to work.
Once you register your site, you need to paste a small JavaScript code on each page of your website, which tracks the users as they arrive. Google Analytics also has a real time feature, which help you monitor the users who are currently viewing pages in your website.
One disadvantage of Google Analytics is tracking the time visitors spend on your site. A correct measurement is done only when the user visits another page. Another issue with Google Analytics is that it provides a lot of features, which can be overkill at times. This also means that it is difficult to explore all these features.
Piwik is a free and open source web analytics solution. Written in PHP, it lets you download the source code and host it on your server. Piwik has almost all the features that Google Analytics does, but being open source, you can modify the source code directly, if required.
Alternately, Piwik provides hosting at a premium cost if you are not comfortable downloading and setting it up.
One issue with Piwik is the range of options that can confuse the user. However, if you want a solution for your local network, Piwik should definitely be your choice.
Parse.ly’s Dash is a web analytics solution which is targeted at large publishing websites. The track is classified by posts and authors, and gives detailed analytics about each of them. It also provides you with unique URLs for authors and posts, which you can share with others, without giving them access to any other resource.
It’s real time analytics are better than the others in this list, with a decent dashboard. However, one important downside is the pricing that can be afforded only when you are making some good revenues.
Clicky is one of those solutions that doesn’t have a very rich feature set, but get things done. It provides you with the same basic analytics like any other option below, with an option to view heatmaps. Cliky has a free limited plan that you can use. Its real time tracking feature is known as Spy.
Clicky’s features aren’t so advanced and hence, easier to get used to as compared to the rest. There are a few paid features, but Clicky is less expensive than other such solutions. If your website is new and you don’t want advanced features, you should give Clicky a try!
KISSmetrics is a tool that focuses only on the visitors. It focuses on where the visitors come from, how they use your site, which pages they visit and the flow of clicks. It shows you how users navigate your site and helps you in understanding the hiccups in that flow.
In short, it helps you in understanding customer behaviour. KISSmetrics focuses on conversions of visits to purchases and it’s a must for e-commerce websites. However, the basic plan starts at $150 per month, which might make you think twice before you proceed.
With this, we come to the end of the tools that help you in web analytics. Did we miss something? Do let us know in the comments below.
