Comparing Website Statistic Tools

October 14, 2008

Owning a website is not that easy as it may sound. You need to maintain so that your website could get a steady amount of visitors everyday. This is so important if your business relies on it. If you are a business owner, you may opt for the new marketing technique called search engine optimization. You may hire somebody to do this for you. Aside from the increase in your sales, you could actually check if your internet marketer is doing an effective job. This is with the use of web statistic tools. You might be wondering how many visitors check your site everyday. You may also want to find out how long do they stay in your site and what are the pages that they would most likely visit.

Web statistic tools can help you in keeping track of the statistics of your site. This allows you to see the number of people visiting your site. You can also know what location they are coming from. This can definitely provide you with information that can measure traffic. You can also understand the behavior of your visitor. These tools can actually help you to find out if your new content is effective. Whether your website has a purpose of gaining profit or not, you probably need some tracking tools. Today, there are a lot of web statistics tools out there. It could be overwhelming if you are not familiar about what it can do for you. There are some website analytical tools that are free and some have fees but whatever it is that you choose remember that they need to help you understand the visitors to your site.

When you are looking for a tool, it is very important if you know what you want to keep track of. It can vary from just the basic traffic monitoring to much complex analysis of the behavior of visitors. Here are some things that you can see in a web statistic tools.

  • Monitoring Hits – You have probably heard about this. It is the number the requests from your file server for certain text image or file. This is meaningless if you actually don’t know what the users are actually doing when they visit your website. This is helpful when you want to know the metrics of your server.
  • Visits– This is the most common unit of measurement that wants to be tracked by webmaster on a website. This is the number where you can keep track of you site’s popularity. If you know how many visitors each page has then you can compare them and find out what page is popular.
  • Unique Visitors – This is the number of visitor with unique IP address.
  • Page Views – This is the number of times a page was viewed by a visitor.
  • Top Entry and Exit Pages – This is the page where people would enter and leave your site.
  • Referrers – Links where people click to get to your site.
  • Search Keywords – Some tools can give you an idea what keywords and phrases people use to find your site.
  • Visitor Information – This tool can give you an idea about the profile of your visitor.

What to Look for in a Web Statistics Tool?

If you are selecting a tool for your site, you need to consider a lot of things. The web analyzer should let you know how much traffic your site is receiving. Many services receive up to 50,000 page views per month. If you want more you might need a paid service. You also need to consider basic information like page views and referrer statistic. Some of them even calculate your project ROI and revenue. Make sure if you are going to select a web statistic tool, it should be compatible to what you need. Below you will find 5 web statistic tools that you could choose from. The table would show you if they got Statistics, Ecommerce statistic, conversion, ROI tracking, referrers and technical support

Shiny Stat – This webstat tool can track at least 50,000 visitor per month. They can provide support by answering emails. They can give page statistics that you can sort and compare. It can also provide statistics related to technology like what browser and what Java Script versions are used. It can even compute ROI and conversion. This service doesn’t track visitor profile.

HitsLink – This a tool perfect for business website as it could track million of page views per month. They have different packages that you can choose from. They track visitor’s page, tech stats, conversion and referrer stats. They have the capacity to send reports using email alert and different file types. They can also track refers and keywords.

Fast Counter – This is Microsoft’s official tracking service. In its basic package, it offers up to 50,000 page view a month. It offers a little on information on visitor but it is good when it comes to refers and conversion data. This is tool offers good conversion report when it comes to ppc and referrers statistics. It can also track keyword, operating system and browsers of the visitors. What is good about the service is its online chat and email support.

Statcounter – This is one of the most popular tracking services today and it can track up to million pages loads. If you have a small website, there is a free package that can support 100 page views. They can offer visitors, page load stats and can monitor a number of website in one account. It can also give you an analysis of navigation paths. This is good tracker for non conversion website. Statcounter can also give reports in different formats.

OpenTracker – This is reasonable price stat tool that support at least 100,000 page views per website. They have multiple access tools and email support. You can choose to view your stats in different time zones. This is an excellent tools if tool if you want a referrer data but this can’t track your ROI campaign.

Statistics Ecommerce Stats Conversion/ROI Referrers Technical Support
Shinystats X X X X X
Hitlinks X X X X X
Fast Counter X X X X X
StatCounter X X X X X
OpenTracker X X X X X

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