What analytics would you recommend?

[WJP]

Hello all,

At the moment I'm using basic Google Analytics but I've heard a lot of things about other providers. I'm happy to pay for something useful, so what would you recommend and why?

 

[ryedale]

What do you need to know that GA can't tell you out of interest?

 

[fisicx]

clicky.com

Far far superior to GA - the granularity of data is quite astounding.

 

[mit74]

What do you need to know that GA can't tell you out of interest?

IP address?

Hilarious how google will leech all they can from an internet user but claim their 'privacy policy' when giving up data they got from YOUR website. Hilarious.
I personally think GA is awful. It's confusing to use, information on individual visits is poor and they're contstantly changing/removing features eg keyword tool.
As mentioned there's loads of great ones around. Recently I created a custom one for an ecomm site that can track users the minute they enter to the minute they leave, logging mouse movements/hovers etc., how long they stay on the page, how long they spend in checkout etc. The admin could then view each case on the dashboard and record where their site needed improving or could use different checkouts for customers and see which one is more popular etc.
They could have even integrated the info into HTML5 graphs to gain more insite into customer habits eg difference between male/female traffic etc.

The information was far better than everything GA could ever provide and it wasn't that expensive considering.

 

[EUWindowsHost]

Google Analytics is the accurate one. We use both Alexa and Google analytics. But the best result is Google Analytics

 

[fisicx]

If you think google is good then it means you haven't tried any of the others. GA is hopeless compared to the alternatives. Even Piwik is better (despite the awfull UI)

 

[WJP]

@ryedale, it's a bit of a case of not knowing what I don't know because I'm new to this. Clicky have a free trial of their premium package, so think I'll give that a go and see what it's like. Thanks for the recommendation.

 

[zigojacko]

We also use Woopra which is worth checking out. All really depends what you're wanting data on and how you want to use it.

 

[SDPromoParrot]

Have you ever tried Clicktale? You can record how visitors actually interact with your website and play the footage back, plus maps that show how users click on your website. I think they have a free trial at the moment too.

 

[ClickWebStudio]

It really depends on the type of website you run, and what you need to know..

For me, I stick to my server's own statistics and that's more than I need for most of my sites - if you don't need more than that, don't use anything more than that - it'll only slow your site down.

But if for example, you run a website where it would be useful for you to know where your users went from one page to another, on what page (and when) they decided to leave, etc. this sort of thing can be very helpful and I strongly recommend checking out the above mentioned analytics platforms.

GA is typically all most people need.. But if you really are going to rely heavily on these analytics programs to understand what you need to do to make your site perform better for you in terms of productivity / effectiveness, then definitely consider something more.

 

[InternetMarketer]

I would suggest to use GA since it's the most accurate one out there, you just have to optimise your wesbite with those analytic tools that are floating around the web. For example I used freeseoanalysis.org and I got way better results. I am not saying that you have to use that one exactly it's simply free and is updated quite often as I noticed.

But I think it's possible to use several analytics at once so that you can see which one is the most correct one.

 

[zigojacko]

I would suggest to use GA since it's the most accurate one out there, you just have to optimise your wesbite with those analytic tools that are floating around the web. For example I used freeseoanalysis.org and I got way better results. I am not saying that you have to use that one exactly it's simply free and is updated quite often as I noticed.

But I think it's possible to use several analytics at once so that you can see which one is the most correct one.

That tool is close to useless. There's way better tools out there for free - and even those I wouldn't recommend either. And since when did a thread about analytics suddenly become a place for you to recommend a poor online SEO analysis tool?

Incorrect analytics data is also normally down to implementation, not the inaccuracy / inconsistency of the platform too!

 

[fisicx]

He's recommending it because it's in his signature.

Anyone who thinks GA is the most accurate is living in cloud cuckoo land

 

[InternetMarketer]

I don't think that it is a useless tool, it is a product of working in seo for years... I added most of known onsite SEO rules there... So, your words are really a disrespect to our work to offer free way of analyzing your site...

yes you are right on me posting at this thread though, I was confused...

 

[zigojacko]

I don't think that it is a useless tool, it is a product of working in seo for years... I added most of known onsite SEO rules there... So, your words are really a disrespect to our work to offer free way of analyzing your site...

It's the same as the other 4 million out there though, though most others have more features... The same old twaddle that "SEO's" were saying 15 years ago. Title length, keywords in headers, meta description length. Bla bla bla.

Times have moved on. Your tool won't help anyone in today's web. Search engines are far more superior and complex than the basic meaningless metrics your tool is instructing site owners to implement.

 

[seoswat]

It is totally to do with what you or the client is after. Somethings as much as it pains me to say, Google Analytics does report better on.

However if you main focus is on customer journey - more specificly, individual customer journey then there are better alternatives out there. A fair few of which are free.

 

[InternetMarketer]

Times have moved on. Your tool won't help anyone in today's web. Search engines are far more superior and complex than the basic meaningless metrics your tool is instructing site owners to implement.

We are not claiming to offer 100% seo analysis with that tool. FreeSEOanalysis.org is simply a check up on your on-page SEO elements... We are not analysing your backlinks for example or your backlinks' quality.

You will see it clearly on the homepage, we say the tool "Simply Lists SEO Errors on Your Web Page in Seconds!"

For you, maybe it is nothing new. But you might be surprised to see there are still lot of websites even the big ones out there with long title or absent h1! And personally I have seen that most of the time a good on-page seo analysis tool is a paid tool. So, we wanted to offer this to everyone...

 

[Jenever]

Have you ever tried Clicktale? You can record how visitors actually interact with your website and play the footage back, plus maps that show how users click on your website. I think they have a free trial at the moment too.

Saw them demo at previous company and wasn't impressed with install setup required, there are a few other who play in this space like Tealeaf (recently bought by IBM), tends to be called CEM (customer experience management), rather than web analytics.....no doubt a term dreamt up by sales and pushed by Forrester reports.

 

[Jenever]

If you have GA and have really found it won't do what you want then change, but like any analytics software it is highly customisable, and how creative you implement custom variables often makes the difference, this is where a good web analyst really pays their way.

I've run large Adobe Marketing Suite solutions, and it can be as bad as GA or far superior (when doing things like sequential segmentation in what was Adobe Discover), but it still comes down to the custom variables and the analysts having time and creative juice to get the most out of the solution.

 

[Birmingham]

analytics does the job, combined with webmaster tools it tells you just about everything you would ever wanna know about traffic and rankings of your own site.

i used to like statcounter but it uses css-hidden images which is not good for seo. other analytics tools are also not good for seo, because they slow down page speed, or involve hidden images, etc. google analytics interferes with seo but as little as possible.

for conversion clicktale and crazyegg do something that analytics doesn't.

a lot of people use tools like semrush for competitor analysys but it's never really accurate enough for me. google webmaster tools gives real precise data about traffic and rankings for your own site - combined witrh analytics for a traffic segmenting and non-google traffic analysis that just about does the job for me. +clicktale when CRO is a big issue though. alexa for instant free traffic estimates of others' sites online. +ose/majestic for link profiles if you're into linkbuilding. many use screaming frog for onsite seo analysis but it's way too robotic for my liking - i'd rather click around manually to check for broken links and missing alt text etc.