If your business relies on your website for revenue or business, then you need to know what it's doing and how it's working. And that means tracking your site visitors and measuring the effectiveness of the site.
It's possible to measure your site's success using your log files and a spreadsheet, but that's hard. You can use a basic log analysis tool, such as those that come with most Web hosting packages. Or you can get a software solution that integrates with your Web servers. It depends upon what you need and what you're willing to spend.
Hosted Service or Installed Software
Most small business owners think that the only Web analytics that they can use is software they install on their local machine. But there are also Web analytics tools that are placed directly on your Web servers and tools that are hosted on an outside site.
Most high-end vendors offer both server and hosted solutions, and there are benefits to both. Server solutions give you more flexibility and hosted solutions are maintained by someone other than you. If you want to keep your stats secret, then you'll need a solution on your servers or local drive.
Always try the software before you buy it.
Real-time Logs or Batched
Most Marketing people will tell you that the closer to real-time statistics that they can get, the better their campaigns will be. But in practice I've found that real-time stats offer too much variability to get more than a general picture of how things are doing.
You should know if your company needs real-time stats from the Web analytics tool. If you do, this will nearly always cost more than batch stats that arrive on a daily (or other time interval) basis. Real-time stats also require much more bandwidth and hardware.
Standard Analytics
Whatever tool you choose should include the standard reports:
- pageviews
- referrers
- visits and/or unique visitors
- authenticated users
- Web browsers
- Operating systems
- domains
- countries
- entry and exit pages
- robots
- HTTP errors
You should also be able to create custom reports to get analytics of specific areas of your site or other customizations.
Tagging Web Pages
A common way for Web analytics packages to track pages is to tag every page with a unique identifier. This tag enables the tool to have more accurate information about each page that is requested and displayed. But it means that you have to put this tag on every page of your site. Most tools that require this have scripts to make it easier, but it still requires more work.
Tracking via Cookies
Another common tool for getting good analytics is to set a cookie on every customer that comes to the site. This allows the analytics tool to have more accurate information about the browsers that are visiting the site, including unique visitors and session lengths.
Some customers feel these tracking cookies are a violation of their privacy. And some people set up their browsers to automatically deny cookies. But if you need to know session data, using a tool that uses cookies will be more accurate than one that doesn't.
Flexibility and Scalability
Customization or flexibility is really important in a Web analytics tool. The more custom reports you can generate the more use you'll get out of it. But remember that while you may be able to generate more reports from raw logs, they are harder to build in the first place.
And you want to make sure that your solution can handle the changes in your business. Right now you might not be getting a lot of traffic, but the point of analytics is to help you improve traffic, so your solution should be able to handle increases.
Support
In order to get the most out of your tool, you want to find one that has a lot of support. This can be free support such as through forums or user groups or paid support provided by the company.
It may be tempting to skip paying for installation or initial support plans, especially if you have already paid a lot for the solution itself. But remember that often the most difficult period of adjustment to a new tool is during the installation and the first few weeks. Paying for installation help or a short term support contract can save you money and time in the long run if you learn how to use the tool more effectively.
Cost
It can be tempting to put cost first in your list of criteria. But if you define the business needs from an analytics solution first, you may find that a paid solution meets more of your needs, and becomes worth the cost. Most free solutions come with drawbacks around functionality, flexibility, support, or scalability.
Remember to include recurring costs into your decision. Many hosted solutions are cheaper in initial roll-out costs, but have monthly fees that can add up. If you get non-hosted solution, you'll have to have someone to manage the tool, run reports, and keep it working - which can cost money.
