Top 8 Analytics Tools for Businesses

Web analytics tools are essential for businesses to be able to test, track and measure online customer behavior.  Every company, regardless of size, requires multiple tools to understand and improve the performance of its website.

The good news is that there are a plethora of top analytics tools available for businesses to use. But, the wide range of options can seem overwhelming.  Here is a review of some of the top analytics tools to help you decide which one works best for your company.

Google Analytics

Google Analytics has quickly become the preferred tracking web analytics tool because of its comprehensive set of features. (Plus, it’s free!)  It also offers users a rare opportunity to draw directly from Google’s extensive data pool.

Google Analytics allows you to track valuable information, such as total visitors, average time spent on the site, how users interact with your site, and so much more.  The dashboard can be customized to meet your needs and has a user-friendly design.

In addition to tracking information about your audience, Google Analytics also offers businesses the ability to set goals and measure conversion based on their objectives.

Although Google Analytics is a wonderful tool, there are a few downsides to its functionality:

• Lack of a Visual-Based Editor
• No Option for Multivariate testing
• No Option for Integrating Additional Data Sources

Clicky

Clicky is great for monitoring small to medium websites, or blogs for businesses.  Clicky can monitor up to 100,000 page views per day on up to 10 websites.  Unlike Google Analytics, Clicky displays visitor information in a visually-based, user-friendly interface.  You also get a live, real-time view of each visitor’s activity on your site.

One of our favorite features available with Clicky is the heat map. With this functionality, you can view real-time activity for individual user sessions, or for a segment of visitors who completed a specific goal. Clicky is also great if your brand is active on Twitter, since it monitors and summarizes any mention of your brand.

Although it does offer a suite of helpful features, Clicky does not offer gradual goal tracking of the keyword traffic that your website receives.  You also have to pay a monthly fee if you want to take full advantage of what this analytics tool has to offer.

Moz Analytics

Moz is one of the Internet’s leading search engine marketing companies, and it offers a complete web analytics package.  Social analytics is one of Moz Analytics’ biggest features that set it apart from its competitors.  It integrates data from Twitter, Facebook and GooglePlus.  Moz Analytics provides detailed graphs that identify top-performing tweets, shares, retweets,  likes, and more.

Another great feature offered by Moz Analytics is the Rank Checking tool that allows you to track your three most relevant competitors.  This lets you compare your website’s progress with your competitors, and see when you are gaining momentum or falling behind.

Moz Analytics allows you to monitor up to 350 keyword rankings per campaign and includes universal results, local results, images and videos as pre-defined options.  However, if you need to monitor more keyword rankings, or report on deeper results to see how your rankings are moving,  you may want to use a different tool.

Moz Analytics may be right for you if you’re looking for an analytics tool that allows you to track search marketing, social media marketing, brand activity, links and content marketing efforts all in one convenient location.

FoxMetrics

FoxMetrics is another tool that helps track customer engagement.  Unlike other analytic tools, FoxMetrics tracks the full customer life cycle, and allows you to see where customers are clicking, what e-mails they are opening, what products they are purchasing, and more.

If your business has a mobile based or desktop application, FoxMetrics is a good choice.  With its functionality, you can track how many people have installed your app, how long it takes users to download the app and more.

While there are several benefits, this analytics tool does have a few cons.  One downside is that it cannot handle a heavy traffic, which is a problem for bigger sites with high volume.  Also, FoxMetric’s free plan has limited use, so ultimately you would have to switch to a paid plan.

KissMetrics

KissMetrics is an effective tool for marketing, sales and product development.  Its customizable funnels are extremely accurate, and consistently match traffic measured with Google Analytics.  For example, KissMetrics allows you to track how many visitors click on your landing page, and then go on to the purchase stage.  I

This analytics tool’s ability to continually track individual user activity sets it apart from other analytics platforms.  KissMetrics is also known to have exceptional customer service, so if you run into any problems, you’re in good hands.

A downside to KissMetrics is that it does not provide granular data surrounding traffic.  In order to see this kind of information, you’ll have to integrate your KissMetrics account with Google Analytics. KissMetrics also lacks the ability to integrate with CRM or email platforms.

Raven Tools

Raven Tools is an all-in-one internet marketing platform for SEO, social media, PPC and content.    Businesses are able to manage, monitor and report on every aspect of their campaigns with a wide range of useful tools and add-ons.

The Raven Tools reporting feature allows users to create clean reports customized with a level of information that is catered to their needs.  This can save hours of putting together manual reports and increase efficiency throughout your business.  Raven Tools also offers a site auditor, which reports on issues related to visibility, page optimization, semantic markup and page speed.  The Link Management tool is another helpful feature that keeps track of links that have been built, and categorizes them by type, source, anchor text and the URL being used.

One criticism is that this analytics tool can be a little overwhelming.  If you want to make the most of everything that Raven Tools has to offer, you’ll need to spend some time on training.  It is also missing features essential for website optimization, such as website rank monitoring, in-depth keyword research, and detailed back link analysis.

Crazy Egg

Crazy Egg is a tool that lets you gain insight beyond page views and basic navigation, and see how your website is actually being used by your visitors. The heat map feature shows a picture of where visitors clicked on your site.  This lets you determine what is working and what is not, so you can make changes that increase conversions.

Another useful feature is the Scrollmaps tool, which shows how far a visitor has scrolled down before they abandon the page.  This can help you better understand where to make changes that will potentially hold your visitors’ attention.

As with other click tracking tools, a disadvantage of Crazy Egg is that it does not provide insight as to why the user did or did not click.  Clicks are also tracked on one single page, so gathering click data on multiple pages or multiple hours of days of a single user set of visits isn’t included.

ClickTale

ClickTale is a tool that lets you record website visitors and view videos that show their behavior, including mouse pointer movements, clicks, scroll speed, navigational issues, keyboard strokes,  and more.

ClickTale offers a number of unique features.  The page report function allows you to monitor page performance statistics that can be used to improve customer experience.  These reports are easy to understand, and can help you determine which pages are working and which aren’t.

Another great feature is ClickTale’s Comprehensive Heat Map Suite. This tool helps you optimize your website conversion rates and usability by visualizing your visitors’ every move, click and scroll.  ClickTale also integrates with several applications, including: Omniture, Webtrends, MailChimp and ExactTarget.

One downside of ClickTale is that there is very little support for simple tasks, such as exporting reports, creating custom reports and downloading images and videos.

What analytics tools have you tried out for your website?   What do you like best?