As you all know, having a user-friendly website is one of the most important marketing tools for a business. It's where customers and prospects go to learn more about your company as well as new product and service offerings. But how do you know if these people really are visiting your site and what exactly they're doing on your site? Are certain days of the week more popular than others? You have to know what's working on your site and what isn't working. The only way to figure this out is to have a good analytics program working behind the scenes. In this article, in no particular order, we'll cover ten of the most popular analytic programs.
1. Google Analytics - In our opinion, Google Analytics is the best value in analytics programs. Google Analytics allows you to dig very deep to view breakdowns of stats such as geographics, overall visits, average time on the site, new and repeat visitors, traffic sources, and more. The wealth of data that you can receive from Google Analytics is priceless. And the cost of using Google Analytics? Free.
2. AW Stats - Certain web hosting companies pre-install AWStats free of charge. AWStats is most popular for the stats it gives on referring sites. This means that it lets you monitor whether someone is linking to your site from a search engine, one of your ads, or simply typing your URL to go directly to your site.
3. eLogic - This program provides three levels of service based on your exact needs. If you need to track only one or two pages, the first level package offers a stat counter that just offers you the most basic reports. The second package gives you more information such as referring sites and demographics. The third package, which comes with a fee, gives you a full history report with more extensive tools.
4. Webtrends: Founded in 1993,
Webtrends is one of the oldest companies in the web analytics industry. This company has grown with the industry by offering real-time data for websites, mobile ads and social media sites. Analytics reports for websites are similar to Google Analytics, and the Social Media reports track conversations within social networking sites.5. Site Meter - Site Meter is great for bloggers who have less than 100,000 visitors per month. Bloggers receive stats on tracking referrals and time on the blog.
6. Stat Counter - Stat Counter is an analytics program for multi-author blogs, allowing unique codes for each author. The site offers stats on information such as keywords and traffic sources.
7. W3Counter - This program comes in a free and paid version. The free version allows you to track up to 5,000 page views a day across 10 websites along with the usual stats. The paid version is for sites with higher traffic, which allows you to track up to 1 million views per month.
8. W3Pearl - W3Pearl differs from other analytics packages in that it doesn't just measure web traffic, but also can analyze the log files of email and RSS feeds to measure just about anything you choose.
9. Webalizer - This program is extremely fast and portable and is very popular for people who host their own servers. Webalizer doesn't provide the in-depth stats that a program like Google Analytics does, but it provides an easy-to-read overview.
10. Piwik - Piwik is an open-source, real-time analytics program. Real-time means that Piwik can process reports every 10 seconds. It analyzes all the basics such as visitors, search engines, and keywords used to get to your site.
Because there are so many different options out there, some analytics programs measure visitors differently. For example, Piwik defines a visit in 30 minute sessions. If someone comes to your site then that same person comes back one hour later, Piwik considers that to be two visits. Other analytic programs may only consider this as one visit since it was the same person in such a short time period.
As we noted above, we feel that Google Analytics is the best option out there. The dashboard overview is very easy to read and navigate and the stats that are provided allow users to dig very deep. If your site does not have Google Analytics installed and you'd like to get more information, let us know.