A commitment to constant tracking relies on a commitment to utilizing the best analytics tools available to you. Here are the top 5 everyone should be using.
1. Google Analytics
One of the biggest selling points for Google Analytics is the fact that it is free. This makes it perhaps the most popular large-scale analytics tool out there.
Don’t let this application’s non-existent price tag make you think that it is less useful than paid analytics software. Google Analytics is a powerful tool for tracking how many visitors you get, how long visitors stay on your site, how many pages they visit, how many visitors each page receives, each page’s bounce rate, and where those visitors come from. This last feature is this program’s most powerful, as it provides a detailed analysis of where your traffic is coming from and how exactly visitors found your site using those methods (what keywords they searched for to find you, which sites sent traffic your way, etc.).
2. Google Website Optimizer
The Google Website Optimizer is another incredibly powerful, yet completely free, analytics tool provided by the search engine giant. Essentially, it is a powerful tool for performing A/B split tests to optimize individual elements of your website’s design.
All you do is select an element that you want to test on your webpage, and then create an experiment with Google Optimizer. You then create multiple versions of this element that you chose to test, and visitors will be randomly assigned a different variation on that element when they visit your site. This allows you to collect information about how behavior changes as you make changes to your website using the website builder.
The simplest method of this kind of multivariate testing is called A/B split testing, where you test two separate conditions and see which works better. By continuously testing different configurations, you will be able to continuously improve your website’s performance in a very real and measurable way.
3. Crazy Egg
Crazy Egg is a great program that allows you to create heat-maps of where your visitors click on after you create a website and post it, and how often they click on each section. This will show you what’s most popular and what your visitors are most drawn to on your website.
One of the most powerful features of Crazy Egg is the ability to track exactly who clicks on what depending on where that traffic comes from. For instance, you can see whether you get more sales or ad clicks from search engine traffic or from that high-profile link you just received.
4. Robot Replay
This is a really cool program that can also provide some really powerful data. Essentially, it’s a small analytics tool you install on your site through your website builder that visibly records use data. After a user has left, you are able to replay what they did on the site like a little screen-capture movie (where they clicked, what pages they checked out in what order, how long they stayed on each page and what they looked at on each page, etc.). While other tools provide you with number-based metrics and statistical breakdowns of visitor behavior, Robot Replay lets you see exactly what your visitors are up to.
5. Bit.ly
While the above analytics tools are more general in terms of free websites that will find them helpful, Bit.ly is a little more focused and specific. This is a free tool that integrates with social media utility Twitter. Bit.ly lets you see exactly who is clicking on the marketing links that you post to your twitter account and when they click them. Twitter can be an extremely powerful marketing tool, and this little application makes it even more powerful as you can quickly figure out the optimal times to tweet any and all important links and marketing leads.
