Free analytics software allows you to track how your website is performing, giving you an edge when it comes to making adjustments and leveraging the data to your advantage.
There are many great components in web analytics. Here’s a list of some great software that provides quality, free web analytics. Hopefully, this will save you from the headache of trying to choose which software is right for you.
Google Analytics
Google Analytics is the go-to platform for many marketers, in large part because it’s totally free, chock-full of features, and comes with the clout of the Google brand name.
After you enter the Google Analytics code into your website’s HTML, the service will measure certain goals for you, including which pages a visitor clicks on, how long they stay, and the actions they take. For example, the tool can tell you whether a visitor is sharing the content on social media or clicking on an ad. Each time a goal is completed, Google logs the conversion in your analytics report.
As Kissmetrics points out, one of Google Analytics’ best features—especially for retail sites and marketers tracking purchases—is the Goal Funnel, with which you can set up a string of URLs that a consumer clicks through when purchasing an item. You can find out not only how many people are going through the process of making a purchase, but also how many are abandoning it at a certain stage. This information will allow marketers to adjust their strategies and make the purchasing experience easier for the consumer.
Google will also report the keywords people search that bring them to your site, as well as which browsers and devices they are using—not to mention from where they are being referred. I often monitor the behavior on our site in order to see which pieces are driving the most traffic and where that traffic is coming from.
When it comes to customizing data, you can track certain campaigns that are driving traffic to your site, create your own reports with hand-picked metrics, and set up custom alerts to have your insights delivered at specific times.
Perhaps the most common complaint about using Google Analytics is the information can be cluttered and the interface difficult to navigate. However, Google is working to counter these complaints with new tools like Data Studio, which lets users turn data into shareable, visually engaging reports. While the platform still may not be the most intuitive, you should be more comfortable with the settings after about a month, and, in turn, get the most out of Google’s free service.
Bitly
Bitly may be best known as a free link shortener, but its features do more than just save space. Once you’ve shortened links—and possibly even added a vanity URL shortener—Bitly gives you the tools to efficiently share those links and analyze their performances.
For example, Bitly reports how many clicks each link generated and when people clicked, down to the hour. The report will also include which platforms people used to share the link so you know if most of your traffic is coming from Twitter, LinkedIn, and so on. Below is an example of Bitly’s map of your link’s geographic distribution of clicks, which is helpful for optimizing and targeting future content.
On the stats page, Bitly gathers results from all of your links so you can assess how your collection of content has performed in the past hour, day, week, and month.
Bitly may not provide as much detailed information as Google Analytics, but if you’re already taking advantage of its free link shortener and clean interface, you might as well use the perks that come with the package.
Adobe Analytics
What it is: traffic analytics and multichannel data collection tool from Adobe
What it’s used for: an enterprise alternative to Google Analytics
Price: on request
4% of experts surveyed use Adobe Analytics. As an enterprise alternative to Google Analytics, Adobe Analytics is a specialist analytics tool, offering multichannel data collection spanning web, voice, OTT (over-the-top), and IoT (Internet of Things). The focus is on machine learning and predictive algorithms for advanced insights.
Mixpanel
What it is: advanced product and business analytics platform
What it’s used for: tracking customer behavior and KPIs across websites and mobile apps
Price: from free for 1,000 monthly tracked users
Another 4% of the analytics experts we surveyed use Mixpanel. Unlike traffic analytics tools, Mixpanel is designed to help SaaS and website owners get real-time data insights into how people interact with a product.
Oribi
Oribi is a Marketing Analytics tool that empowers businesses of all sizes to make smarter, data-driven decisions. It helps you to define your conversion goals without any code.
Features:
- You will get actionable insights to drive results
- Understand trends and be ahead of changes
- Connect email addresses to match journeys to your top prospects
- It helps you uncover all touchpoints involved in a conversion
- You can track and compare multiple campaigns by their UTM
- It helps you to define your conversion goals without any code
Crazy Egg
Crazy Egg is an online analytics application that offers numerous features to track user behavior. It is one of the best analytics tools which enables you to understand customer interests and boost profile from your site.
Features:
- You can see how people are interacting with your product pages.
- Crazy Egg enables you to know new users, a user using a mobile app, or an active user.
- You can track what people are doing with forms and login screens.
Link: https://www.crazyegg.com/
Heap
Heap is a software that offers a simple interface. It is one of the best web analytics tools for free which enables you to reduce the effort for user analytics. You can use it without any knowledge of code.
Features:
- It enables you to measure and improve website conversion rates.
- You can know product and user engagement.
- Heap provides detailed reports to understand analytics.
- This program helps you to understand how customers are browsing your website.
- It is one of the best free analytics tools that enables you to construct an engaging user experience.
Link: https://heap.io/
Conclusion
In terms of the best free analytics software, there is a large number you can select from. Some of them work very well and while others not so well. These are good software packages that give you great value, especially if you’re a small business owner or a hobbyist.