#6 web analytics tools to improve your site
Inhaltsverzeichnis
Web analytics tools allow you to collect, analyze and report website data. If you are a seller or business owner looking to improve your site, these are the type of tools you need.
There are more website analysis tools than you will ever need. So here is a list of just six tools you will need depending on the type of data you need to track.
1. Mateo – Overall Website Performance
Mateo tells you where your visitors come from, what pages they visit and what they do on them. Ethically.
Mateo is an alternative to Google Analytics designed with data privacy in mind. Protects the owner of their data and the privacy of their visitors.
Professionals value Mateo for its lack of data sampling (you can analyze all your data), open source code, local hosting, and variety of features.
Because you need it
When visitors come to your site, they take all kinds of actions that can show you how effective your website is as a marketing tool.
Mateo will help you answer questions like these:
- Is your website traffic growing or decreasing?
- Where do your visitors come from?
- What navigation paths do your visitors use (i.e. how do they find your most important pages)?
- How effective are your digital campaigns?
- How many visitors take valuable actions for your business?
- What are the biggest bottlenecks for conversions and purchases?
In other words, Mateo provides critical website data without which it is difficult to do digital marketing.
You may also need it for legal reasons. Google Analytics is illegal in some EU countries (or at least its default version), in which case you’ll need a GDPR-compliant alternative like Mateo.
Featured Feature
Some website events are more important than others: sales, form completions, downloads, visits to ghostwriter services specific pages, etc. To monitor them, you can set the “Goals” feature.
Mateo allows you to track various data related to your goals. You’ll know how many people completed the goal, where they came from, how performance changes over time, and which channels contribute the most to the goals. You can also assign revenue to your goals to make it easier to track ROI.
You can visit Mateo Live Demo to get an idea of the product.
Prices
You can use the basic features of Mateo for free if you host it on their server. The cloud-hosted version starts at $23/month and depends on your monthly traffic.
You can also get premium plugins like A/B testing, funnels, or heat maps. This is something worth comparing with third-party tools that offer the same functionality.
2. Ahrens – All-in-one SEO
Ahrens is a set of tools used by SEOs and marketers to outperform the competition and get more organic traffic from search engines.
Getting a specialized tool for this type of traffic is crucial because it is usually one of the largest sources of traffic to websites. Furthermore, this source is free, passive and consistent.
Because you need it
SEO requires specialized tools like Ahrens. You won’t find the right kind of data about your site and your competitors‘ sites anywhere else.
Ahrens discovers:
- Keywords your customers are searching for.
- Content ideas from your competitors and top-performing content in your niche.
- Link opportunities that can boost your SEO.
- Your progress in the ranking.
- Technical SEO issues that can hinder your ability to rank.
- Etc.
In addition to organic traffic, Ahrens will also show you where your competitors funnel paid traffic, what keywords they offer, and what ads they use.
Featured Feature
With Site Explorer by Ahrens, you can gain insight into how your competitors and other successful sites generate organic traffic.
For example, the Content Gap report automates the time-consuming process of finding the keywords that your competitors rank for, but you don’t. This way, you can get ideas for new content based on the keyword research your competitors have already done.
Prices
Ahrens starts at $99/month, and you can get two months free if you pay annually.
If you’re just starting out in SEO, Ahrens offers a range of free tools to help you take your first steps. A notable one is Ahrens Webmaster Tools, which allows you to check SEO performance for the sites you own.
Google Search Console (GSC) is another SEO tool on our list. You’ll need it in addition to any other SEO tools you’ll use.
It’s free and allows integrations with many other web analytics tools, including Ahrens.
Because you need it
To get data on your performance on Google search-related products straight from the “bot’s mouth.” GSC is where you can get the most accurate data on a handful of SEO metrics, such as website traffic, click-through rates, and index coverage.
Besides that, GSC has some unique features:
- Submitting sitemaps
- Find traceability problems
- Inspect manual actions
Note
That said, you’ll likely need other SEO tools as well. This is because GSC has its limitations when it comes to the availability of keyword and link data. To illustrate, here is a comparison with Ahrens Webmaster Tools (AWT).
Featured Feature
One of the most popular use cases for GSC is using click-through rate data, found in the “Search Results” report.
This metric shows the number of clicks your web pages received divided by the number of times they were displayed. So when you see a keyword ranking high but generating a poor CTR, you can look at the page that ranks for this keyword and try to optimize its title.
Prices
Google Search Console is free.
4. hub spot – Marketing Automation
Hub Spot is one of the most popular CRMs on the market and has been expanding into marketing tools lately.
One of the main benefits of using Hub Spot is that it offers analytics, content creation, and automation functions “under one roof.” So while you’re analyzing website data, you can easily move on to another tool in the suite to put your insights to use.
Additionally, some teams value the Hub Spot family of products because it offers seamless operations between marketing, sales, and customer service.
Because you need it
If you’re in the business of generating and nurturing leads, you can’t go wrong with Hub Spot.
Without any coding skills, you can set up a site, start blogging, and create lead magnet landing pages. You can then engage your prospects in email workflows without needing another tool.
The analytics capabilities you get in the package aren’t the most advanced on the market, but they’re enough to get a decent view of your performance.
Additionally, since the company has added more free tools and features, Hub Spot may be a good option for small businesses.
Featured Feature
While testing the analytics features in the free version, I found the dashboard feature to be very useful. With different features on board, you certainly don’t want to click through the entire tool to find the right report. A customizable dashboard solves that because you get all your important reports in one place.
A quick board I created. Shows data from different tools in one place.
Prices
You can get started with Hub Spot’s basic functionality for free. Premium plans start at $18/month (for an annual subscription) and largely depend on the size of your contact list.
Visual Web Optimizer offers everything you need to launch experiments on your website:
- A/B and multivariate testing
- heat maps
- Session recordings
- Customizing Pages for Audience Segments
- On-site surveys
- Form filling analysis
Because you need it
VWO takes the guesswork out of web design and writing. It allows you to test ideas for virtually every element of your website to see how they affect clicks, registrations, and other goals. No coding skills required.
Featured Feature
VWO allows you to quickly jump in and try out almost any type of idea to improve your website, and that’s obviously great.
But what impressed me is how VWO allows you to be scientific and organized in your experiments (which is also great for collaboration).
I could document observations as they occurred, regardless of ongoing testing. Once I had an idea of how to approach my observations, I was able to create a hypothesis and tie it to any type of experiment.
VWO also provides an orderly planning tool (Kanban). I can just leave my hypotheses in the backlog and let someone choose which one should be tested.
Prices
VWO offers a free plan. Premium plans start at $173/month for the main tool and depend on the number of users you want to track per month and optional tools.
6. GT Metrix – Quick Speed Test on Any Website
How fast does your website load? This is the question best answered by Metrix.
It’s one of the most feature-rich site speed tools on the market, offering crucial metrics (like Core Web Vitals) and automated monitoring.
Because you need it
Starting from the top, why do you need to monitor your site speed? There are a couple of reasons:
- User Experience – Nobody likes slow sites. This can translate into loss of users and customers, especially when access to content must be fast (e.g. news sites).
- SEO – Site speed is one of the Page Experience Signals. If your site is slow, that can hurt your rankings.
- Improvement – Chances are; your site could perform even faster if you knew where the bottlenecks were.
Now why this tool and not just any site speed tool? Here are some good reasons:
- Access to multiple testing locations (so you know how fast your site is in the country/city where your most important users are located)
- Simulation of different types of devices
- Simulation of mobile Internet and various connection speeds.
- Regular monitoring with alerts
By the way, you can test any site with this tool, useful for agency-side marketers.
Featured Feature
Even a free Metrix plan allows for automatic performance monitoring. You can also set specific conditions for an email alert to be triggered.
Prices
Metrix offers a free plan. Premium plans are offered on a monthly and annual basis, starting at $10.67/month if you opt for an annual subscription.
Frequently asked questions about tools used for web analysis.
What are the benefits of using web analytics?
The main benefit is to improve website performance. Using the data made available by web analytics tools, you can identify areas that need improvement, such as conversion rates, speed, or search engine optimization.
Web analytics also provides valuable market data: who your visitors are, where they come from, and what content they are interested in.
Are web analytics tools easy to use?
Generally speaking, yes. They typically require no coding skills and can be set up effortlessly.
That said, there can be some learning curve regarding different types of data and how to use them.
What type of data can you collect with web analytics tools?
Here are some of the most actionable data types:
- Website traffic (with sources)
- Search Engine Ranking
- Organic Keywords
- Backlink Profile
- Funnel conversion and goal fulfillment
- Campaign performance
- High/low performing pages
- page speed
How do I use web analytics data to improve my website?
Good web analytics tools offer functionality based on the most important aspects of site performance. They make it easy to spot things that need improvement, like organic traffic.
Typically, improvements are made to the content, design or technical aspects of the website.
What about data privacy?
When it comes to visitor data privacy, look for a tool that complies with your country’s laws (e.g. GDPR, CCPA).
Some tools offer two-step authentication and SSO to further protect your data.
For general website performance tools, there is sometimes the option
by Jenny Walker
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