Analytics Software Solutions

Below is a brief overview of 25 analytics software options (and one add-on) that should give you an idea of what each tool costs and what functionality each offers. Before you check out the chart and series of descriptions below, note that it is important to go into any analytics evaluation with a clear idea about what you need the software to do. Some important questions to ask yourself before you start to evaluate Web analytics tools are:

• Why do I need a different/new tool?
• What sort of data do I need this tool to give me?
• What actions will be driven by that data? How, specifically, will I use the data to inform decisions and activities?

Just because a feature sounds interesting and provides you with some additional data about your site doesn’t mean it’s actually valuable. You want to know the specific holes in your current reporting that will be filled by additional functionality, and more importantly, you want to be sure that that extra information will drive better decisions and ultimately more revenue and profit for your business.

Once you’ve identified what you’re looking for in these tools, you should be able to use the information below to help you make a better decision about which analytics package will be right for you.

The table below is available as an image, and you can also get the raw data in this Google Doc.

Web Analytics Software Comparison Guide

1.  Google Analytics

Google Analytics was originally designed as a tool for AdWords users. It was basically a repackaged version of Urchin on Demand, which Google acquired in 2005. It was redesigned in 2006 with additions from Adaptive Path after the company acquired Measure Map.

Key Features:

• Benchmark against all other analytics programs
• Content Experiments for A/B Testing

Cost: Free for all users, enterprise solutions available

2. Adobe Site Catalyst

Adobe SiteCatalyst is created by Adobe, best known for its Adobe Creative Suite which includes software programs such as Photoshop, Dreamweaver and Fireworks.

Key Features:

• Can be enhanced with Test&Target (for A/B testing)
• Drag-and-drop dashboard
• Embeddable reports
• Customization options

Cost: $5,000+ per month

3. IBM Coremetrics Web Analytics, Now IBM Digital Analytics

IBM Digital Analytics is part of IBM’s Enterprise Marketing Management group and works in conjunction with the optional add-on IBM Digital Analytics Multisite. The program was originally Coremetrics Web Analytics but was renamed after IBM’s 2010 acquisition of Coremetrics and subsequent restructuring of its analytics offerings.

Key Features:

• Comparative insights/benchmarks against industry leaders
• Actionable data
• Customizable dashboard

Cost: Custom quote

Optional component: IBM Coremetrics Enterprise Analytics, Now IBM Digital Analytics Multisite

IBM Digital Analytics Multisite is part of IBM’s new umbrella Enterprise Marketing Management (EMM) group and is an optional add-on to IBM Digital Analytics. It’s based on Coremetrics Enterprise Analytics; in addition to Coremetrics, IBM acquired Unica in 2010, as well.

Key Features:

• Three-pronged enterprise analytics solution under EMM
• Combines best features from two original products

Cost: Custom quote

4. IBM’s Unica NetInsight

IBM Unica NetInsight is one component under IBM’s Enterpise Marketing Management group, created based on Unica’s original offering after IBM acquired the company in 2010.

Key Features:

• On-premise
• Customizable dashboards
• Drag-and-drop functionality
• Heat map overlays
• Multiple data configuration options

Cost: Custom quote

5. iPerceptions

iPerceptions was founded in 2000. While iPerceptions isn’t a stand-alone analytics tool, it’s designed to be integrated with a core analytics application, such as Google Analytics, to provide a more comprehensive look into the VoC. iPerceptions offering consists of five different components, including webValidator, 4QSuite, WASP, Mobile Website Feedback and Tealeaf.

Key Features:

• Captures Voice of Customer (VoC) data
• Live feedback
• Customer surveys
• Real-time customer path analysis
• iPerceptions Satisfaction Index

Cost: Custom quote

6. Google Analytics Premium

Google Analytics Premium is a relatively new program, introduced in September 2011. Advanced data capabilities are the biggest selling point to date, but expect most improvements to Google Analytics to hit the Premium version first.

Key Features:

• Nearly limitless data (one billion hits per month)
• 24/7 customer support
• 50 custom variables
• Four-hour data turnaround

Cost: $150,000 per year

7. Web Trends

Webtrends was one of the first Web analytics solutions to enter the market with its inception in 1993. Webtrends Analytics is the company’s core analytics offering.

Key Features:

• Unlimited custom metrics
• Heat maps
• Custom mobile and social measurement features

Cost: Custom quote

8. Mint 

Mint is an affordable, on-premise solution created by Shaun Inman. There are no official split testing tools, although testing is possible by flagging two pages for detailed analysis and comparison.

Key Features:

• On-premise solution
• Unlimited site tracking
• Extensive plugin library (Peppermill) for additional functionality

Cost: $30 per site, one-time fee

9. Reinvigorate

Reinvigorate is another analytics offering by Webtrends, which acquired the company in 2011. This acquisition allowed Webtrends to offer real-time analytics across Web, social and mobile channels.

Key Features:

• Real-time analytics
• Web, social and mobile channels
• Affordable pricing with sophisticated capabilities

Cost: Free (3 sites, 3 users, 500,000 visitors per month); paid plans range from $10 to $20 per month for additional limits, custom plans also available

10. MixPanel

MixPanel first entered the space in 2009 when the company began researching and raising seed capital. By July 2012, MixPanel was already tracking one billion actions per month.

Key Features:

• Built-in analytics component
• Save and tag pages
• Charts and graphs for sharing data

Cost: Six levels of service ranging from Free (25,000 data points per month) to High Volume for a custom quote. Mid-price plans range from $150 to $2,000

11. KISSmetrics

KISSmetrics, founded in 2008, differentiates itself with its person-centric focus. The company is headquartered in San Francisco and backed by angel investors and early venture capital funders such as True Ventures, Polaris Ventures and SoftTech VC.

Key Features:

• Integrates with CRM, email marketing and other programs
• Analyze data from multiple channels in a single interface
• Visitor-focused data instead of broad stats

Cost: $49 to $499 per month

12. FoxMetrics

FoxMetrics  was founded in 2011 by Rydall Williams, so it’s a newer player on the analytics scene and also one of the more affordable options.

Key Features:

• Real-time data
• Tracks data from any device
• Unlimited attributes
• Individual visitor analysis to create visitor profiles

Cost: $20 to $120 per month

13. Site Spect

SiteSpect has been offering A/B and Multivariate testing solutions since 2004. The company was founded by Eric J. Hansen, CEO and Larry Epstein, COO.

Key Features:

• Integrates with other analytics products
• Web Analytics Tag Transformation and Segmentation (WATTS)
• Full statistical analysis from within any third-party analytics application

Cost: Estimated $3,000 per month

14. Woopra

Woopra, founded in 2008 and offers real-time customer analytics along with integrated CRM analysis within a single interface.

Key Features:

• Watch single visitor path in real time
• Retention Analytics
• Funnel Analytics
• Segmented Analytics

Cost: Free Basic plan (30,000 actions per month, non-commercial only); paid plans range from $39.95 to $349.95 per month

15. Autonomy 

Autonomy is one of the most comprehensive customer response monitoring programs available. Autonomy Explore, powered by Autonomy IDOL, is the company’s core Web analytics solution.

Key Features:

• Products range from Voice of Customer (VoC) to customer feedback, social analytics, A/B and Multi-Variate testing
• Offers complete picture of customer experience
• Integrates data across all channels

Cost: Custom quote

16. AT Internet

AT Internet offers a comprehensive suite including Web, social and mobile analytics in real time, serving more than 3,500 customers worldwide. Analyzer III is the company’s latest core Web analytics offering.

Key Features:

• Total customization
• Soft Tagging feature
• Data Manager configuration environment
• Drag-and-drop functionality
• Heat map overlays
• A/B and Multi-Variate testing

Cost: Custom quote

17. comScore Digital Business Analytics

comScore has been in the digital landscape since 1999 with the introduction of comScore Digital Business Analytics. The company handles over 1 trillion interactions from 172 different countries each month, equal to approximately 40 percent of total Internet searches each month.

Key Features:

• Lowest-form raw data
• In-cloud or on-premise
• Integrates with third-party apps

Cost: Custom quote

18. Yahoo Marketing Dashboard

The Yahoo Marketing Dashboard is Yahoo’s attempt to produce a similar offering to Google Analytics. The initiative is sponsored by American Express OPEN. It’s brand new on the analytics scene, introduced in May 2012. The Yahoo Marketing Dashboard pulls its Web data from Yahoo! Web Hosting, Yahoo! Merchant Solutions or Google Analytics.

Key Features:

• Integrates with Constant Contact and Orange Soda
• Unlimited visitor tracking
• 24/7 customer support

Cost: Free

19. Piwik 

Piwik is a free, open-source analytics tool with unlimited tracking capabilities and on-premise data storage. It supports more than 100 search engines and has been downloaded more than 1.2 million times since its launch in 2008.

Key Features:

• On-premise data storage
• Reports and widgets for location-based visitor data
• Easy exporting
• Manual tracking of non-Java-enabled mobile users

Cost: Free

20. Clicky

Clicky is a real-time Web analytics platform developed by Roxr Software, which was founded in 2006.

Key Features:

• Tracks up to 30 goals (paid)
• Google Search rankings
• Outbound link tracking
• Heat map overlays

Cost: Free (up to 3 million page views, single site),;Pro $9.99 (10 sites, 30,000 page views); Pro Premium for custom quote (100,000 page views, up to 30 sites)

21. GoingUp

GoingUp is a free service with a host of tracking and optimization tools to maximize your presence on the Web.

Key Features:

• Actions and goal tracking
• Visitor location
• User profile data
• Inbound link monitoring
• Google PageRank and Alexa Rank tracking
• Page optimization tool

Cost: Free for unlimited sites

22. Open Web Analytics

Open Web Analytics was built by Peter Adams and is designed to be an alternative to Google Analytics.

Key Features:

• On-premise solution
• Open-source platform
• Up to 5 custom variables
• Real-time data
• Heat map overlays

Cost: Free

23. Stat Counter

Stat Counter  was founded in 2006 and now serves two million members and tracks more than ten billion page loads each month.

Key Features:

• Unlimited websites
• Broad summary and deep-level visitor views
• Intuitive dashboard

Cost: Free (up to 250,000 monthly page views), paid plans range from $5 (500,000 page views) to $119 (60 million page views) per month

25. Site Meter

Site Meter  provides real-time data and individual visitor tracking for the 100 most recent records in the Free version. Premium accounts have limits ranging from 4,000 individual data records to 25,000 records and up to 15 million page views per month.

Key Features:

• Individual visitor tracking
• Single-visitor path view
• Broader statistical analysis

Cost: Free version; paid plans range from $6.95 to $199.95 per month

The core issues and focuses in auditing a twenty page B2B lead gen site will be very, very different than the key things you want to think about and address in auditing a large e-commerce site.

The same is true of conducting an SEO audit on a publishing or news oriented site, and as a result I wanted to call out five key considerations that you’ll need to account for in your SEO audits for publishing sites (in addition to all of the typical blocking and tackling you’ll want to consider in any SEO audit).

Scalable, Flexible Information Architecture

Obviously, thinking through information architecture is important for every site, but with publishing sites it’s particularly important to consider ways that you can structure the site to help account for the fact that:

• They’ll likely be adding several pieces of content per day/week
• Much of that content will often be very time-sensitive
• The aggregate of that content will often drive significantly more organic search traffic than any of their static category pages (and even the site’s home page)

As a result, you’ll want to identify different ways to pull archived content closer to (as in: fewer clicks away from) the site’s home page (which conserves most of the link equity); and, you’ll also want to find a way to get more link equity to newer pages. A few tactics that will work for most sites in doing this include:

Pagination

One opportunity to “flatten” your site’s information architecture is to move from simply having “previous and next” links on your home and category pages, including numerical pagination (1, 2, 3, etc.) to allow you to keep more historical content closer to the site and category home pages. Obviously you’ll want to be sure to adhere to general pagination best practices.

An Index of Indices

By creating a page that functions as a collection of links to other collections of links, you can have pages that all have ~100 links per page. This allows you keep large volumes of content only a few clicks from the main page.

The thing to think about here is what you can create that would actually be a useful collection of links for folks who click on the page: what data do you have tied to individual blogs posts? This could be tags or some other classification.

What People are Searching for Widget

To ensure you’re pushing a lot of link equity at the most temporally-relevant posts, you might consider building a widget that leverages your analytics data to keep the posts that have received the most search traffic in the last day or week in a navigation box.

Other ways of surfacing popular posts can also ensure you’re flowing equity to your most topical content, such as most shared/commented on widgets that focus on fresh content:

By building a publishing-specific information architecture, you’ll put the site in a better position to rank across each of the different terms and pages they’re trying to drive more traffic for and to.

Use Of Tags & Categories

Tags and categories on publishing sites can be particularly problematic from an SEO perspective. Here you want to work to answer a few questions:

• Who is tagging content, and what criteria are they using to create tags?
• How much thought is going into creating new tag pages and/or assigning a post to a specific tag?
• Are too many tag pages being created (meaning there is a lot of dilution of link equity and several thin pages housing one post)?
• How much thought was put into the category structure?
• How much value is being created for users by the current tag and category structure?

Many of these will be questions you’ll have for the client; and in a lot of cases, you’ll have to consider the utility to the user with an existing structure (even if it looks sub-optimal from an SEO perspective).

But, in many cases, little to no thought has actually been put into category and tag structure (and particularly tagging), so you may have to really re-think the current implementation altogether. Obviously whatever the current set up information architecture is really important for SEO.

Google News Inclusion & Optimization

If you’ve primarily worked on lead gen and e-commerce sites, Google News may be a bit of an unfamiliar entity for you. Basically, you want to think about two potential issues:

They’re Not in Google News But Should Be

Assuming they’re publishing lots of quality, news-oriented content, you’ll want to point out that they should be included in Google news. A list of qualifications for inclusion can be found here, but basically they include:

• Unique & news oriented content (you clearly have this)
• Individual post URLs should include 3 digits and be unique (the dates included in the URLs meet this requirement)
• Pages and links need to be clean, crawlable HTML (you meet this requirement as well)

They can simply submit their site here.

And, it’ll be reviewed. You’ll also likely want to recommend submitting a Google News sitemap via Webmaster Tools (this option won’t be available until they’ve been accepted). There’s more information on that that you can point them to here.

They’re in Google News, But Their Content Isn’t Showing Up

As with the main organic search algorithm, there are a lot of different ideas about how best to improve rankings. Some resources you’ll want to check out would include:

• The Top Ten Most Important Google News Ranking Factors
• The Top Ten Negative Google News Ranking Factors
• Ranking Factors According to Google

Some of the things mentioned above as ranking factors that you’ll want to focus on to improve rankings – such as creating an authoritative site, getting people to share your content, getting people to link at your content, and having the story first – probably seem pretty obvious, but there are also some things to keep in mind that might be a bit less obvious, including:

• Leveraging the Standout Tag - Google offers you an opportunity to designate certain content as higher quality via the standout tag, so you can differentiate higher quality, original reporting from thinner content you may be re-writing or even republishing from a feed.
• Performance Issues – One thing that may be keeping your site from ranking in Google news could be technical issues, so you might consider leveraging a tool to test performance: http://www.webpagetest.org/ and http://tools.pingdom.com/fpt/.
• Authorship/Google Plus Profiles – Consider implementing Google authorship as a means of increasing your SERP visibility and click-through rate.

Some of these enhancements can give quality content that wasn’t getting exposure better placement in the news listings.

Scalable Keyword Research

Similar to the issues you’ll face with information architecture and with tagging, you need to devise a strategy for implementing keyword research that can support several individual content pieces (often authored by individuals you’re not interacting with as you’re delivering the audit), so we typically try to do a couple things here:

• Research Keywords – You obviously can’t conduct keyword research for thousands of pages, but depending on the scope of the audit and what you’ve agreed on before hand, it may make sense to actually make specific keyword targeting recommendations for the highest level pages (the home page and the category pages, for instance).
• Teach Them to Fish – Alternatively, what will often provide a lot more value in aggregate is to make really specific suggestions for how they might research and incorporate keywords in content on an ongoing basis.

This second item can be a bit tricky, since you’re likely providing advice for journalists and professional writers who may have a jaded view of “SEO” and keyword targeting, so you want to be sure to:

• Give a really specific example of how this would work for an existing page on their site. This will allow them to see that you’re not “keyword stuffing,” but rather, just taking more popular terms into consideration and determining whether you can fit them into the copy naturally and logically.
• Stress that there’s no need to “force” variations that don’t fit or are illogical (and that actually this will be worse for SEO as it likely makes the article less sharable)
• See if you can find and reference a good, relevant example of a site that’s creating good content but also incorporating some relevant keyword variations (preferably in a closely related niche) so that they can see it’s not just C level content that’s well researched and optimized

As with any good SEO audit you want to try to structure things so that you’re not only making valuable recommendations, but you’re also putting the client in as good a position as possible to be able to actually implement and execute against your recommendations.

Relative Value Of CPMs & Other Actions

One thing it’s important to understand in any SEO audit is how the client actually makes money. With e-commerce sites, this is about sales and the margins on those sales; with lead gen sites, you may need to understand how valuable different offers are (request a quote versus sign up for a newsletter); and, with publishing sites it’s often important ask and understand if certain types of content are more valuable than others.

For instance, certain content series may have specific sponsors on top of site-wide banners, and as such, that content could be significantly more valuable (and worth more of your attention). Additional offers such as newsletter sign ups or e-Book downloads are also things you’ll want to learn about and try to quantify the value of if possible.

Obviously, you’ll have several other considerations in conducting an audit on a publishing site, but these are five that might not be items you’d necessarily think of if you’re primarily working on lead gen and e-commerce sites.

What about you: what other publishing-specific things do you look at in auditing publishing sites?

Keywords and search queries are two very different entities. While keywords are the inventory an advertiser buys, search queries are the actual words people type into a search engine. The distinction is important, because search queries typically cover a significantly longer tail than keyword buys, and there is a lot of value in mining search engine query data.

To take a deeper dive and look at the way that head, mid-level, and long tail search queries perform in paid search accounts, we took a random sampling of WordStream client accounts and analyzed the aggregate cost, number of conversions, and cost-per conversion across the sample. The results were very interesting, and to some extent would confound the zealots on both the “short keyword list, no such thing as the long tail” camp and the “the highest value lives in the lowest frequency of clicks” contingency.

Which types of search queries drive more traffic for less spend?

We analyzed about a million dollars worth of spend, spread across roughly 15 million impressions. A few notes on the data:

• The advertisers we looked at were a randomly selected mix of lead-gen and e-commerce companies who are small to mid-sized advertisers.
• We analyzed the total spend, number of conversions and cost-per conversion against a series of segments.
• We divided the data based on the number of clicks per query: 300+, 100-300, 6-100, and 0-5.
• All of this activity was on Google’s AdWords.
• We were also careful to mix in both long-term and new account data, so that the results wouldn’t be overly skewed by the way our software builds campaigns.

It’s also worth noting that paid search is a multi-billion dollar industry, and this sample size is by no means definitive, but there are nonetheless some very interesting insights to be gained.

First let’s look at the distribution of spend across head, mid, and long tail terms:

The interesting thing about this analysis is that a vast majority of the spend in the accounts in question was directed toward long tail search queries. The aggregate number of search queries in the accounts analyzed was greater than the aggregate number of keywords by about 4 to 1.

This leads to a misconception about the distribution of searcher intent. Many advertisers think that most of the traffic is being driven by a short list of keywords, when in reality these advertisers are spending significantly more of their budgets on the long tail.

Next, let’s look at the distribution of conversions across the same segments:

This data maps pretty consistently with the first data series, showing that these advertisers are driving a majority of their conversions from queries with 0-5 clicks. Additionally, 90 percent of the conversions for this data set were driven by queries with 1-100 clicks attached!

Probably the most interesting data set of all is the cost-per conversion across head, mid and long tail queries:

The cost-per conversion in the 6-99 click segment is less than half of the CPC for more competitive terms, while the particularly low-volume terms (0-5) are roughly two-thirds higher per conversion than the 6-99 click segment.

So what does all this query data mean?

I think the story this data is telling is that:

• There is enormous value in the long tail of search queries
• Query data has a longer tail than keyword data
• To achieve high ROI, it’s crucial to aggressively mine negative keywords and to effectively target more specific search queries.

Here are three key takeaways from our analysis:

There is value in the long tail. The fact that 0-5 click queries and 0-100 click queries comprise so much of the cost and total conversions for these companies is obviously an indication that the long tail of search queries contains a lot of traffic and opportunity.

There’s a longer tail for query data. The fact that the total number of keywords is roughly a fourth of the total number of queries is the result of numerous long tail search queries “hiding,” rolled up under a single keyword. A cursory glance at any of the advertisers accounts might lead one to believe that most of the traffic is being driven by a short list of keywords, when in reality a series of broad matched keywords are matching against more specific, less popular queries.

Negative keywords also have value. The final key takeaway is the product of the discrepancy between the cost-per conversion for 0-5 clicks versus 6-100. While 0-5 clicks drove a majority of the cost and conversions across these advertisers, the 6-100 segment had a significantly lower cost-per conversion.

In theory, the 0-5 segment should be more specific variations of words and phrases. This should mean that by and large they’d be better targeted and more likely to convert. So where’s the gap?

The relatively poorer results in the 0-5 segment are largely because those queries aren’t hyper-targeted: many are the result of broad match aggressively pushing impressions at people that are matched to much broader keywords. Additionally, many irrelevant terms are rolled up in those broad keywords, driving up costs by matching terms people didn’t realize they’d be bidding on to ads for what are now very poorly targeted ads.

Where to go next with search query data and the long tail

While this data certainly isn’t representative of every single advertiser’s experience, it does reveal the need for a strategic approach to combining broad match with negative keyword discovery and implementation, and it emphasizes the importance of discovering, grouping and targeting specific search queries.

Since this article was spurred by a series of recent discussions surrounding the long tail, I thought I’d include links to the articles that inspired this inquiry:

• The Pundits Are Wrong: Don’t Cut Off Your Tail! – George Michie wrote a piece on the value of segmentation & granular “long tail” targeting within paid search campaigns, which followed Rimm Kauffman’s own empirical study on the difference between head and long tail keywords.
• PPC And The Importance of The Long Tail – Additionally, George hosted a great webcast on the subject which went into greater depth on the value of broad match and negative keywords, and offered some advice on how best to implement.
• Broad Match + Negative Keywords = A Profitable Long Tail – Brad Geddes offers a nice synopsis of the value of broad match, and the importance of pairing it with a strong negative keyword strategy.
• How To Group Your Keyword, Plus a Q and A With WordStream’s Larry Kim – In addition to effectively using negative keywords, you’ll also need to intelligently segment your keywords and find a means for mining query data to assign positive keyword candidates. In this article Josh Dreller interviews the founder of my company, Larry Kim, about how best to attack the issue of grouping and segmentation.
• Shifting PPC from Low to High Resolution – Craig Danuloff of Click Equations writes frequently on the subject of gaining deeper insight into your paid search campaigns through closer attention to search query data. This is a nice overview of the Click Equations “high resolution” approach
• PPC Man Drowning: Too Many Keywords – Andrew Goodman offers some interesting counter-points to the premise that including large numbers of keywords in a paid search campaign is beneficial
• Ding Dong? The Truth About the Life And “Death” of The Long Tail – In this article from May, I walked through some of the benefits of including more granular keyword targets within a paid search campaign, and attempted to draw out the differences between keywords and search queries and the significance of those differences in a bit more detail