You’ve heard all the hullabaloo about website analytics software and website analytics tools and you’re finally curious enough to start asking questions. Some of those questions might be, what exactly is website analytics software free? What does it do? And how can I get started with it because I don’t even know where to begin. You keep hearing words like web analytics, visitor tracking, different kinds of traffic, and you just aren’t sure why it all matters.
Web analytics software free: Are you looking for the best web analytics software free to use? I mean, why should you spend hard earned cash when you can find website analytics tool free that’s just as great. You’ve probably tried many of the popular ways to do this and still cannot find the right answer.
Woopra
Woopra is another tool that offers real-time analytics tracking, whereas Google Analytics can take hours to update. It is a desktop application that feeds you live visitor stats, including where they live, what pages they are on now, where they’ve been on your site and their Web browser. You also have the ability to chat live with individual site visitors. This can be a great feature for your e-commerce site to interact with customers. Woopra offers a limited freebie plan as well as several paid options.
Crazy Egg
Crazy Egg uses the power of Heatmap technology to give you a visual picture of what site visitors are doing on your Web pages. It shows you where people are moving their mouse on the page and where they click. There is a link between where people put the mouse and where they are moving their eyes. So, this kind of tracking helps you see what areas are catching the most attention and interaction from users. There is a free one-month trial with this service, and prices start at $9 month for 10 Heatmaps.
Mouseflow
Mouseflow is somewhat of a combination of UserTesting and Crazy Egg. You can see video of users interacting with your website, including every mouse click and movement, scrolling and keystrokes. You also get to view heat maps from different time periods so that you can see the effect of changes that you make on your page. Pricing varies depending on how many sites you want to cover and how many sessions you want. For a single site and up to 100 recorded sessions, there is no cost. Over that, prices start at $13 a month.
Google Website Optimizer (google.com/websiteoptimizer) – Free
Another free tool from the folks at Google, their Website Optimizer is a complex testing service that allows you to rotate different segments of content on your website to see which sections and placement convert into the most clicks, and at the end of the day, the most sales. You can choose what parts of your page you want to test, from the headline to images to text, and run experiments to see what users respond best to. And of course, with GWO being free (you don’t even need Google Analytics to use it), it could be the only A/B (a technical term for multiple versions of the site running at once) and Multivariate (MVT) or complex testing solution.
“While not web analytics proper, Google’s Web Site Optimizer is the perfect companion to measurement and allows small business owners to test simple (A/B) and complex (multivariate) variations of their site, content, and landing pages using powerful statistical methodologies,” says Peterson. “While set-up is somewhat involved, the user interface is delightfully easy to learn and, of course, the service is available at the best of all prices — free.
Optimizely (optimizely.com) – $19-$399/month
A relatively new service (launched in June 2010), Optimizely is simple to use but its results can be quite powerful. In essence, it’s an easy way to measure and improve your website through A/B testing. As a business, you can create experiments with the site’s very easy-to-use visual interface. The beautiful thing about this service is that you need absolutely zero coding or programming background, as the tools are easy for anyone to use.
FOXMETRICS
FoxMetrics is a web analytics tool that allows you to customize the metrics according to your business requirements.
There are four main features that FoxMetrics boasts: funnels, profiles, segments, and triggers.
- The funnels allow you to identify where your visitors are dropping an action, for example, an online purchase. This gives you the power to improve the interface so you can maximize your profits as well as return customers.
- FoxMetrics automatically builds user profiles and creates a customer life cycle that tracks each visitor, so you know how often someone views your site content over time. This feature allows you to plan marketing and promotions to target regular users by offering a reward for their loyalty.
- The segmentation feature is found in many of the other web analytics tools we’ve mentioned (and will still be listing). This segregates your website traffic into relevant categories, adding to the information gathered about how users are interacting with your site as well as how they access it.
- Finally, triggers are actions that you can use to base the setup of reactions. For example, if a visitor clicks on a particular section of your site, you can assign an appropriate action, such as a pop-up.
FoxMetrics allows you to access your analytics via your phone. You’ll also be able to track software installations and newsletter views, which most web analytics tools fail to do. And if you have any third-party applications you want to use alongside FoxMetrics, the tool allows for easy integration.
Some of the features are only available on the premium packages, priced at $499 a month.
GAUGES
Although JavaScript is starting to be considered somewhat outdated, most of the internet still uses the coding language—including Google itself. This is why the Gauges web analytics tool has been developed using JavaScript. The user interface is easy to navigate, with an intuitive layout and categorization. The dashboard allows you to view all of the analytics data in one go, with a clear statistics overview that isn’t over-complicated.
To this same effect, Gauges also focuses mainly on the very basics of web analytics. The tool competently tracks how much traffic your site is generating, as well as where these views are coming from. This feature allows you to keep track of the way your placement on SERPs is affecting traffic, as well as telling you which referrals (backlinks from other sites) are more successful than other. Furthermore, Gauges will also show you where visitors to your site are navigating afterwards—whether they’re moving on to other pages on your site, following an external link you’ve included in your content, or if they’re heading back to the search engine to try again.
All of this information is important and can help you adjust your marketing and content strategies as well as better plan for future posts. The actionable data is made readily available in real time.
Gauges offer a free trial period, after which you can opt for one of the three great packages ranging from $6 to $48 per month.
PageSpeed Insights
PageSpeed is a free Google tool that gives you the ability to see how fast (or slow) your web pages load.
In this day and age of high-speed internet, your site must be able to keep up.
Even with a high-speed internet connection, your website could experience painfully frustrating loading times. Most internet users aren’t going to wait around for more than a second or two for a page to load.
A slow website could be caused by one of many different things, such as network latency, poor server optimization, or huge image/file sizes.
According to a study done by Aberdeen, a single second delay in website response time can lower conversions by almost 7 percent!
Pricing: Free!
Conclusion:
When you’re starting out, it can be confusing to learn about website analytics software free. There are a lot of options that you will need to analyze your website traffic or app usage. Some tools are great for beginners while some are better for experts. We have discussed several web analytics software free here on our blog before, so I thought it would be useful to bring them all together in one place.