There are definitely a lot of useful web stat software and tracking tools online. There are also some staples in the industry, like StatsCounter and others. But there are also some newer services and other, not so well known, website stat tools worth reviewing. I left Omniture and a few other larger companies off of the list because I felt they appealed mostly to companies with deeper pockets. The list below is instead suited to the "everyday" Webmaster.
GetClicky.com - Clicky is a web analysis tool that tracks a high level of detail for every visitor to your website. Some of their website stats show "actions per visit" for users, visitor hostnames, most active visitors, tagcloud stats data, and more. Personally, I would rate this tool a bit higher than Google Analytics, but that's probably because of the deep data it provides. We were very impressed with the free version of Clicky and plan to use this cool web tracking tool more in the coming months.
Measure Map - We decided to include MeasureMap even though they are upgrading their stats tool. We used this tool back several months ago and were impressed with the ease of tracking website referrers. We were one of an early batch of beta testers and the ability to track down to the single post level to view backlinks and other metrics was valuable to have. A lot of bloggers love this stats tracking software. We would recommend bookmarking this website and/or signing up to receive the update when they are accepting new clients.
StatCounter - Perhaps one of the most widely used web stats softwares online, Statcounter provides a very easy integration and, much like Clicky mentioned above, gives real-time web stats tracking. They do offer a free version for websites with 250,000 pageviews per month or less, but if your website traffic exceeds 1,500,000 pageviews per month then you'll need to shell out at least $9/mo. A few features of Statcounter include highly detailed analysis of the last 500 pageloads, keywords used by visitors to find your site, and most popular pages.
SiteMeter - Another very popular web stats tracking tool, SiteMeter is on tens of thousands of websites. We used Site Meter a little more than two years ago on several sites but have not used them in a while. Some of the features they include are visitor details, referring URLs, entry page and out-page clicks, and page views. SiteMeter has recently built a widget for those who like watching things on their site in real-time. There seems to be a decent disparity between the free and paid versions as far as features, but hey - free is free I suppose. So, if you sign up and use the free version and decide you like it, the paid version will set you back around $7 per month.
Google Analytics - I don't think that we need to go into much detail here. Most everyone I know and their mother uses this free analytics software. Most of the data the average website owner needs can be fulfilled by Google analytics. Page views, referrers, detailed visitor stats, side-by-side date comparison reporting, and so on. Google Analytics seems to still be the choice of the masses.
Reinvigorate - Funny name, decent web stats tool. Reinvigorate states that "running in the system tray (Windows) / system status bar (Mac) you no longer need to endlessly flip between your work and stats. When something happens, Snoop will let you know." This may sound like more of a distraction in my opinion. Nonetheless, you can track orders and events with audible sounds. Good luck with registration though. They are accepting Beta invites only and we signed up way back in 2004 and 2005 but have never been accepted. :-\ Anyone care to get us in?
CrazyEgg - I love this service! Maybe it's the Web 2.0 look and feel, or the Heatmap or Overlay functionality, or the fact that it gives you live reporting. Either way, CrazyEgg is a great tool despite the low number of pages you can track at once. We would highly recommend this web stats software so give the free version a whirl.
Haveamint - I like Mint and have used it for a couple of websites. You'll need Apache and MySQL for this software to work and it'll set you back about $30 per website. Mint really gives you a fresh look at your site's stats with "painless panes - Mint’s compact, easy-to-digest interface [that] adapts to the size of your browser window." Mint also comes with stats on feed subscriptions, search filters, and numerous interface refinements. Very sweet UI for sure.
GoStats - GoStats was rated a bit further down on our list of web stat tools as we felt it was less superior to some of the other tools listed above. GoStats does have a free and paid version available. The free and paid versions both give you page views, referring URLs, and most of the normal features. We couldn't really distinguish between the free and paid versions an what each provides but if you'd like an analytics software that is easy to setup, GoStats fits the bill.
SmarterTools - Here is a Windows (.NET based) web stats software. We don't usually run .NET websites, but if your website is .ASP or on the Windows environment, this tool might be a good starting point for a desktop or server application. The cool thing about this web stats tool is that the Pro and Enterprise versions allow for multiple sites per server to be tracked. This would be great for schools and other organizations with lots of websites.
iPerceptions - If you want to measure website satisfaction, then give iPerceptions "iPSI" give you web validation. I'm not necessarily talking about web standards validation, but rather what visitors do on your website. iPerceptions helps to funnel messaging to the decision makers of the company to help monitor checkout processes, content success, and customer insights - all in real time.
ClickFox - We decided to add ClickFox to the list although they are more along the lines of a customer retention and/or behavior tool. If your site sells a product or service, or need to improve up sell or cross sell opportunities, ClickFox just might be the tool you'll need. (Note: We have not used this software, so if anyone can give more input on it's capabilities, that would be great).
SiteClarity - Another .ASP solution, SiteClarity was used by a client of ours that is in the manufacturing industry. So we were able to see first hand just what this web stats software was capable of. The few things that really stood out with this software was the SEO-centered features such as its "Path Analysis" that shows step-by-step visitor behavior and "funnel reporting" to assist in measuring bail-outs from check out or registration processes and other form-filling actions.
GoingUp - Another real-time stats tool, GoingUp gives you a simple look at your visitors, referrers, page views, and other basic essentials. Their free version is just a sample of the more robust paid version. What's more interesting is their analytics and SEO software, where they show you your inbound links and link growth percentage, conversions, Google PR, and Alexa ranking. Looks like a pretty good tool but we could never find out how much the paid version actually is :-\ Does anyone know?
Conversion Stats - We used this web analytics tool briefly to test the ins-and-outs of it. It's pretty straight forward with Geo tracking, conversion tracking, shopping cart integration (for conversions) even tracking link campaigns. I feel that it's a little pricey compared to other tools we've looked at in this post, with it's basic version setting you back $29.00 for the 400k per month visitor package. If the price point was a little lower we'd rate it a bit higher.
WebStat - Nothing to boast about here except for the free verion allows for tracking of up to 20k page views per month. If you only want to sift through top level web statistic reports, then their 10 key reports might be right for you. If you are doing 100,000 page views per month, expect to pay around $35. What I REALLY don't like about WebStat is their pricing scale. They show a price jump of about $3.00 for every 10k page views. So, if you have a good month and push 400 to 500k page views, you'd have to fork out $150 to $180!! No thanks.
103Bees - Another funny name but 103 Bees does offer something a bit different. 103 Bees is built more for the SEO-minded person and allows you to view data such as related keywords and even useful information on long-tail keyword website stats. Showing you useful search terms and segmenting "short head" terms is definitely a useful resource to have if you are into monetizing long-tail keywords.
Clicktracks - I've always liked Clicktracks software. It does a good job of displaying user behavior data and help to drill down to what on-page elements help in conversions. Another cool feature is the ability to import data from Overture and Google - good to have if you are doing PPC and need to make changes to campaigns that are not performing too well.
Deep Software - I thought this log analyzing software was worth mentioning. What I like about them is the straight forward reporting options - although I'm not fond of the actual UI (looks too much like Windows). You can drill down to data pretty fast and select ranges of reports to view. I like that you can customize this web stats software more than others and can add custom browser, search engine spider, and OS definitions if they are not there already.
Crawl Track - The first thing I'll have to say to the folks at Crawl Track is please get a new website design. I'm not sure that leads are being converted very well with the current website.
In a nutshell "CrawlTrack is a free application (license GNU GPL), which allow to track search-engines crawlers and spiders visits on your website and to follow day after day your position in the main search engines and social bookmarks index." I think this tool is a good supplement or comparison to Google Analytics because Crawl Track give you the keywords used for visits and the entry page link to it. Not to mention it's always a good idea to know your site's crawl rates.
Robot Stats - Another good robots crawling tool. Robot Stats "is a free application analysing the web robots visits on your site. For each page of your site, a small PHP code allows RobotStats to detect if the visitor is one of the 180 robots supported by the application." Crawl Track and Robot Stats are both pretty good crawl products - and they're both free!
Monitis - Monitis simply monitors availability, load, responsiveness, functionality, search engine ranking, traffic and user experience. We liked this web stats tool because it not only monitors your website's uptime (via HTTP/HTTPS GET/POST, PING, TCP, etc) but also counts the number of visits to your Web site in real time and provides basic stats for page views, visitors, and so on. Their pricing was nice to - from $1.28 to $5.00 per month for their service.
Semonics - A division of Monitis listed above and all around cool software that gives you backlinks monitoring, ranking monitoring (in Alexa, Compete, etc), and Social Bookmarks Monitoring. For these reasons alone we loved this web stats software. For $15/mo. you can get 200 keywords monitored within reports (maximum 30 results queried per keyword). A very nice service for that amount of keywords monitored.
Crawl Tracker - Use WordPress? Want a search engine robot crawl report showing your most crawled pages? Crawl Tracker should get the job done. Patrick Altoft build this tool back in early 2008 and decided to share it with WordPress users. WIth it you can access crawl data for 3 main search engines, monitor your crawl rate over time, and discover how crawl rate is related to PageRank. Very nice information to know!
SEOMeter - Another free crawl analysis tool, SEOmeter gives the ability to collate crawling trend against their ongoing marketing campaign and other SEO strategies. With this information at hand it should give users of this crawling tool the ability to make intelligent SEO decisions with page content additions or other improvements.
Did we miss any other good tools? Please let us know in the comments below!
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