5 Great (Free) Web Analytics Tools You Might Not Know About Yet
So believe it or not, you don't actually have to have a big
budget to do great web analytics work. That is certainly a myth. And
sure, most people know about the wonders of free Google Analytics, but
thought I would take the time to share a few of the other great free
tools out there in the web analytics world (excuse the pun Manoj!)
Woopra
This is a great alternative to Google Analytics! Woopra is a very new tool, and is fresh out of the beta oven. This tracking tool is ideal for less trafficked websites, especially for blogs. It offers all the standard metrics that Google Analytics offers, plus two cool features that Google Analytics doesn't offer. Firstly, it has real time visitor analysis (creepy but great - you can see exactly which source your visitor comes from, the page they are on, and their path around your site etc), and secondly, they offer a great built in chat tool, that allows you to popup messages to your website visitors and actually talk to them - this is great for generating real time feedback or to offer help. Might be worth checking out, especially for those of you looking to try something different than the leading free Google Analytics tool.
Woopra
This is a great alternative to Google Analytics! Woopra is a very new tool, and is fresh out of the beta oven. This tracking tool is ideal for less trafficked websites, especially for blogs. It offers all the standard metrics that Google Analytics offers, plus two cool features that Google Analytics doesn't offer. Firstly, it has real time visitor analysis (creepy but great - you can see exactly which source your visitor comes from, the page they are on, and their path around your site etc), and secondly, they offer a great built in chat tool, that allows you to popup messages to your website visitors and actually talk to them - this is great for generating real time feedback or to offer help. Might be worth checking out, especially for those of you looking to try something different than the leading free Google Analytics tool.
Crazy Egg
Crazy Egg is basically a very advanced version of Google Analytics’ site overlay tool. It allows you to visually see EXACTLY where people are clicking on your website, and even shows you this in the form of a heatmap. It even allows you to segment this visual analysis based on things like visitor referrer. In particular, this is a great tool for helping you find poorly clicked areas on your website for testing (and yes, no-ones website is perfect!) They have a free basic version of this, plus some more advanced paid versions, but the free version should be more than enough to get some great insight into where your visitors are going (or not going!)
Crazy Egg is basically a very advanced version of Google Analytics’ site overlay tool. It allows you to visually see EXACTLY where people are clicking on your website, and even shows you this in the form of a heatmap. It even allows you to segment this visual analysis based on things like visitor referrer. In particular, this is a great tool for helping you find poorly clicked areas on your website for testing (and yes, no-ones website is perfect!) They have a free basic version of this, plus some more advanced paid versions, but the free version should be more than enough to get some great insight into where your visitors are going (or not going!)
Enquisite
If you took out the Search Engine reports part of Google Analytics, and added in a lot more detailed reports regarding your regular search engine traffic (resulting from your SEO efforts) and your PPC efforts (paid search engine clicks), then you have ‘Enquisite‘. It is a very useful free tool for those of you who spend considerable time and resources attracting website visitors from search engines, and allows you to do some great analysis to help improve the ROI of your marketing efforts. An even more advanced, but expensive version of this is Omniture's Search Center - which also allows you to manage your campaigns.
If you took out the Search Engine reports part of Google Analytics, and added in a lot more detailed reports regarding your regular search engine traffic (resulting from your SEO efforts) and your PPC efforts (paid search engine clicks), then you have ‘Enquisite‘. It is a very useful free tool for those of you who spend considerable time and resources attracting website visitors from search engines, and allows you to do some great analysis to help improve the ROI of your marketing efforts. An even more advanced, but expensive version of this is Omniture's Search Center - which also allows you to manage your campaigns.
4Q
I am a firm believer that one of the best ways to gain insight and understanding about what is happening at your website is to survey your visitors. You should never just rely on click stream data. Survey answers tell you ‘why’ your visitors are doing the ‘what’ that you see in your clickstream data, and enable you to get ideas for improving your website, thus improving the visitor experience, increasing the chance of them coming back (which should be the ultimate goal of any website). This new survey tool called 4Q is free and easy to set up and start generating good feedback and visitor insight. Oh, and Avinash Kaushik, genius web analyst is behind this great tool. A more expensive advanced survey solution to this would be something like OpinionLab.
I am a firm believer that one of the best ways to gain insight and understanding about what is happening at your website is to survey your visitors. You should never just rely on click stream data. Survey answers tell you ‘why’ your visitors are doing the ‘what’ that you see in your clickstream data, and enable you to get ideas for improving your website, thus improving the visitor experience, increasing the chance of them coming back (which should be the ultimate goal of any website). This new survey tool called 4Q is free and easy to set up and start generating good feedback and visitor insight. Oh, and Avinash Kaushik, genius web analyst is behind this great tool. A more expensive advanced survey solution to this would be something like OpinionLab.
ClickTale
ClickTale takes visual analysis tools like CrazyEgg to an even higher level, and enables you to record and watch what your website visitors do without the need of expensive usability labs! Its great for gaining insight through the perspective of your visitors eyes, and reveals exactly where they go, how far they scroll, and what troubles they are having (and believe me, you will be surprised where people actually go on your website!) And it only requires a few simple lines of code to be added to your pages, which is great for non-techy people. The free version allows up to 100 recordings a week - more than enough to get started with. Intriguing stuff! A more expensive, fully featured version of this would be TeaLeaf.
ClickTale takes visual analysis tools like CrazyEgg to an even higher level, and enables you to record and watch what your website visitors do without the need of expensive usability labs! Its great for gaining insight through the perspective of your visitors eyes, and reveals exactly where they go, how far they scroll, and what troubles they are having (and believe me, you will be surprised where people actually go on your website!) And it only requires a few simple lines of code to be added to your pages, which is great for non-techy people. The free version allows up to 100 recordings a week - more than enough to get started with. Intriguing stuff! A more expensive, fully featured version of this would be TeaLeaf.
So there you have it. If you enjoyed this post, and my style of writing, feel free to check out my own web analytics blog, Rich Page Ramblings,
where I not only offer web analytics
insight and opinion, but I also rate and review popular websites. And thanks again to Manoj for having me!
http://www.enquisite.com/
http://4q.iperceptions.com/
http://www.clicktale.com/
http://logdy.com/
insight and opinion, but I also rate and review popular websites. And thanks again to Manoj for having me!
http://www.enquisite.com/
http://4q.iperceptions.com/
http://www.clicktale.com/
http://logdy.com/
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Free web tools
Web Tools
Free web tools including webmaster tools. Select
a tool below.
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http://www.iwebtool.com/tools/
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Startup PR: Tips For Getting Publicity Without A PR Firm
http://onstartups.com/home/tabid/3339/bid/6383/Startup-PR-Tips-For-Getting-Publicity-Without-A-PR-Firm.aspx
I came across a great article today by Jason
Calacanis on the topic of PR for startups. Jason Calacanis is founder and
CEO of Mahalo, but you probably would better know him as the the guy behing
Weblogs, Inc. In any case, he’s accomplished, and knows a thing or two about
getting visibility for a startup.
I’ve always thought of myself as being really different from Jason (note: I’ve never actually met him). He seems to be the classic extrovert and seems capable of really putting himself “out there” for his startup. Though I don’t think of myself as lacking in passion, I just don’t have the gumption he does.
In any case, If you’re involved in a startup (particularly if you happen to be venture-backed), the article is worth the read. However, the original article is over 4,500 words and on the off-chance that you’re lazy like me, here are some of my favorite points from the article:
1. “My philosophy of PR is summed up in six words: be amazing, be everywhere, be real.”
2. First time I’ve ever the heard of the term ceWebrities. clever. With regards to these ceWebrities, “these overnight successes are 10 years in the making.”.
3. “Be the brand…you must be in love with your brand and inspired by your brand’s mission to have any hope of getting press.”
4. “Be everywhere…every single night I would go out and meet folks in the internet industry…while other folks went home to their families, I went out and made a family.”
5. “Your job is to transfer the enthusiasm you feel for your brand to everyone you meet.”
6. “Always pick up the check — always…everyone remembers who picked up the check”.
7. “Set a goal of creating deep relationships with a small number of folks as opposed to running around trying to trade business cards with as many folks as possible.”
8. “Be a human being. The best way to get PR is not to sell someone on your company or product — it’s by being a human being. Journalists hate being pitched…journalists and bloggers are, in fact, humans.”
9. “Before meeting with a journalist, it is your job (as CEO) to read their last five articles in full…”
10. “Your job as the CEO/founder is to create direct, honest and personal relationships with journalists.”
11. “Attach your brand to a movement.”
12. “PR is, by definition a reflection of what you’ve done. When a startup hits, it’s not one thing that does it, it’s typically many things working in concer.”
I'd summarize the advice and change the 6 words of advice to: Be amazing, be passionate, be human. What's your 6-word version?
Posted by Dharmesh Shah on Fri, Aug 22, 2008
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48 Social News Websites: A List of General and Niche Social Media Communities
48 Social News Websites: A List of General and Niche Social Media Communities
http://www.doshdosh.com/list-of-social-media-news-websites/
I recently wrote a beginners guide to social news websites and this article follows up on that by offering a list of the social news websites you can use to get information and web traffic.
There are a great deal of social news sites on the internet, sometimes too many. Most of them are dormant and are no longer active, largely because they were poorly marketed and hence, never had an active community of users in the first place.
For instance, this webpage has a list of over 380 social news sites (http://3spots.blogspot.com/2006/04/all-digg-style-applications-list.html). Most of them are a waste of your time: they are riddled with spam or are so ill-promoted that they’ll never attract a critical mass of viewers or social news participants.
You don’t have a lot of time on your hands. You want a community that gives you fresh news on topics you care about. You want something that sends prospects and traffic while branding your website or business. You want a social news site with a long term returns on investment. Here’s a list of some of them.
40+ Social News Websites: Notes about this list
I spent some time going through hundreds of social news sites and came up with a list of sites which I think are worth exploring. Each site on this list is evaluated according to various criteria, including the no. of votes for each story and the frequency/date of submissions, all of which are indicators of user/viewer activity.
This list is not meant to be comprehensive. It doesn’t include every social news website out there but only the ones which I think has potential for providing you with relevant/fresh news while giving exposure to your ideas, brand or website.
Some of the sites on this list have a broad topical focus while others are created to cater to a specific niche. I’ve divided the list into two portions: General Social News or websites which cover a wide variety of news and Niche Social News which refers to specialized sites that only focus on a limited range of niche topics.
This list purely consists of English social news sites. There are no social bookmarking or social network sites included. I’ve not included video sharing sites because I’ll be writing more on them and video marketing in a future article.
Here’s a brief definition of social news sites, in case you’re unfamiliar with them:
Social News websites are communities which allow its users to submit news stories, articles and media (videos/pictures) and share them with other users or the general public. Some of these articles will be given more visibility, depending on various factors such as the number of user votes for each item.
Apart from counting registered user votes, some social news websites employ human editors to determine the visibility of each news item. Certain stories will be removed from the website while others may be given a ‘featured‘ position if the story is highly relevant and news worthy.
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Analysts on Twitter
Edit: 12 May: updated with 10 additional analysts
After I published the top analyst twitters last week, I am pleased to say there has been a surge of activity amongst the analyst community regarding who twitters and how they use it.
Analyst Twitter Directory
SageCircle is always looking for analysts and others to follow on Twitter. If you are on Twitter or know an industry analyst that tweets, please send me the address at carter [at] sagecircle dot com.
Updated August 4, 2008
http://sagecircle.wordpress.com/directories/analyst-twitter-directory/
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13 Marketing Points on Facebook
13 Marketing Points on Facebook
2 Comments Published by Rodney Rumford July 29th, 2008 in Facebook, Facebook Marketing.13 Marketing Points on Facebook: People are always asking us how they can market their business, brand, product or service on facebook; so here is some food for thought. There are many ways to market effectively on facebook.
I put them all in 1 nice slide. Let these points roll around your noggin for a while and start to think about how you might leverage these opportunities within facebook for your business or brand.
Take note that some of these marketing points are viral carrier mechanisms that are only available if you have an application that you own in facebook.
Facebook Marketing: 13 Points:
Conspicuously absent is the facebook “Pages”; consider that one number 14 and a free bonus for paying attention.
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Web Analytics Must!
Analytics Evangelist Avinash Kaushik’s mantra of simplicity to illustrate some of the useful features and reports in Google Analytics, a free but powerful web analytics software tool. Kaushik’s thinking is based on “Occam’s Razor Principle” (which boils down to a poetic way of saying “KISS“)
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