When it comes to web analytics tools, Google Analytics is
the top choice, more popular by far than other options that offer services for
a charge instead of Google’s oh-so-attractive free price tag. It is estimated that just slightly less than
half of the top 1 million websites have Google Analytics profiles set up to
track their traffic (Metric Mail, 2010) It seems that more than a few other companies
share my affinity for free marketing tools!
Of course,
Google Analytics is not the only free web metrics tool out there. Other popular
free tools include the following:
·
Yahoo! Web Analytics – Offers essentially the
same tools as Google Analytics. Yahoo! Analytics also incorporates some
demographic data captures from users who have provided it via other Yahoo!
products (like e-mail accounts).
·
4Q – Incorporates a qualitative surveying tool
to help marketers get a look at the whole picture of what’s happening when
visitors are on their site.
·
Piwik – An open source analytics tool that isn’t
hosted by a third party. Piwik users download the software and host it on their
own servers, so they can have more confidence about the security of their data.
(Gube, 2009)
From everything I’ve seen, it
appears that Google Analytics has the easiest set up process. Maybe this is why
it remains so popular. I can certainly see why some of these other options
might be attractive.
For
marketers looking to delve deeper into their web metrics reporting, there is no
shortage of paid tools. Marketers interested in added functionality can choose to
use a product that has a very low cost, like Clicky, or they can buy in to a
larger, more comprehensive solution that ties in to other customer databases.
IBM’s Coremetrics is one of the most popular high-end web analytics tools.
Google Analytics also offers a premium service that can be purchased as an
add-on for up to $100,000.
The
Measuring Success blog recently highlighted two ways companies can evaluate
whether a paid analytics tool is worth the cost. Author Brian Clifton (2011)
pares it down to two factors – resource and value. The resource benchmark is
based on the manpower a company has dedicated to website analysis. Clifton says
if you don’t have at least one full-time staff person devoted to evaluating
your web metrics, you will never be able to get through all the data available
in the free tools, let alone start making use of metrics exclusive to paid
analytics tools. The value benchmark looks at actual ROI of the tool. For
example, if you are looking into Google Analytics Premium at an annual cost of
$150,000, “if your conversion process is a $10 million per year revenue
generator for you, $150k is of the order of 1-2% of the revenue. That means, if
GA Premium can help you improve your conversion rate by a mere 1-2% it will
have paid for itself.”
There
is a whole world of paid and free tools out there, but here’s the way I see it.
I’m certain that there are benefits unique to each and every product, and that
a company with an infinite amount of resources could make use of many of these
products to paint a rich picture of its customer experience on its website. In
my current position, I run a four-man marketing team at a public university, so
my time and staff resources are at a minimum. My plan is to stick with
mastering one or two free tools before I even fathom making a move to any kind
of paid reporting platform. I’ll be taking things one step at a time!
References:
Clifton, B. (November 15, 2011). Should you pay $150,000 for
your web analytics tool? Measuring Success. Retrieved from http://www.advanced-web-metrics.com/blog/2011/11/15/should-you-pay-150000-for-your-web-analytics/
Gube, J. (January 2, 2009). 10 promising free web analytics
tools. Six Revisions. Retrieved from http://sixrevisions.com/usabilityaccessibility/10-promising-free-web-analytics-tools/
Metric Mail. (August 4, 2010). Google Analytics market
share. The Metric Mail Blog. Retrieved from http://metricmail.tumblr.com/post/904126172/google-analytics-market-share
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