Evaluating a Website for Purchase? Site Analytics Push-Button Easy
Looking at a website before a purchase can make you feel like a ship captain observing an iceberg in old nautical days. Site customer feedback, available comments and virtual patting on the back or criticisms can be thought of like the iceberg’s tip, while the bulk of the site you want to buy is held in place by what is under its surface in form of analytical data that you need to unearth. In order to avoid focusing on this tip prior to making a purchase, you’ll need to come by valuable tools that should render the analytics both easy-to-do and actionable. Let us check what is at your disposal to avoid being mesmerized by the mere tip of an iceberg.
Determining what works, what doesn’t work and what can be upgraded on the website you want to purchase is a key consideration in order to achieve the best possible results. Each of your actions in direction of making this business decision should be based on site analytics that you manage through the use of the tools that allow you to get information on how the website of your interest performs. Analytics help you get valuable information on its traffic, clicks, and views which are subsequently analyzed and transformed into actionable information.
All of these features are offered by Google Analytics, often considered the most robust and easiest to use amongst the site analytics tools, provided that you are granted access to the relevant data. Even if it was not for these, it is a free tool, supported by mighty Google itself. It collects data about parameters such as traffic and keywords, including those that drive the highest numbers of visitors to the site of interest. Thanks to this information, it is easy to determine possible conversions as well as the loss of visitors, which are factors to consider when evaluating a site’s statistics for purchase. This tool also offers quality support in the form of knowledge bases, courses and video tutorials and Google promises to support it with regular updates in many years to come.
Source: Google Analytics Solution
Crazy Egg
Wants to achieve similar objectives, its motto being “What’s making your visitors leave?”. This tool offers visualizations in the form of overlay structures and heat maps that allow you to track visitors’ navigation in the website of your interest. This is achieved by giving you insight into which content the users click on, what the parameters of their mouse and scrolling movements are, and how they interact with your calls-to-action, etc. Identifying which elements of the website you want to purchase attract the most attention and where the visitors come from, is bound to help you with your site analytics and evaluation efforts.
Clicky
Allows insight into site traffic in real time, while also focusing on historical data. Thus, you can peek under the site’s hood and check the relevancy of the content that attracts most visitors. In addition to this,Clicky’s focus on real-time analytics allows you to monitor users’ actions in a “live” manner. Premium features include funnel/path and conversion analyses, heatmaps and objective setting, while Clicky also boasts a user-friendly interface that will prevent you from being bogged down by often overwhelming numerical data.
Inspectlet
In case you conclude that, for example, Google Analytics tells you only WHAT you need to know, Inspectlet will tell you WHY something is the way it is. This tool is described as an equivalent as looking over visitors’ shoulders while keeping attention on everything they do during their visits. This includes scrolling and mouse movements, clicks and keypresses while on the website. Therefore, the idea of analytics as imagined by Inspectlet comes in the form of entering the customer’s mindset and creating valuable information in the process.
Chartbea
Similarly, Chartbeat puts audience engagement in the focus of its purpose as an analytical tool. It offers second-by-second tracking of the content that people read, while each site, page, and article are examined down to the pixel level. The creators of this software promise that their reader engagement tracking goes beyond mere clicks or views, as the focus is on the time intervals spent on consuming each piece of content. Chartbeat guarantees balanced performance across various devices and platforms.
Piwik
Chartbeat’s competitor Piwik is an open-source site analytics software tool, offering real-time analysis of data via a dashboard that wants to attract those who find even Google Analytics complicated. It tracks engagement, traffic, actions on site, conversion and other metrics. In addition to this, it offers some unique analytics, such as those focused on e-commerce, creation of visitor profiles, as well as a dedicated mobile application for both Android and iOS. Users are offered to receive daily backups of their data, as well as full technical support.
Source: GCN.com
Woopra
Woopra is a site analytics tool that puts the accent on what is going on the site instead of page views, with its focus on “turning numbers into people”. It offers profiling individual users in real time, in addition to providing analysis of both funnels and segments. Site analytics is done in real-time and is based on relevant collected data.
KYA
KYA is a relatively new analytical tool that focuses on the individual aspect of tracking audience engagement. So, instead of dwelling on sheer numbers, it wants to personalize analytics pertaining to each and every user or visitor. It offers some attractive features, such as Engagement Tracking, which provides scoring for pages based on traffic, social sharing and visitor’s behavior. As it is a novel tool in the market, you can also employ it as an addition to trusted tools such as Google Analytics to ensure that you reap benefits from both of them.
Summing it all up – site analytics
Looking at site analytics prior to making a website purchase should not be boring or overwhelming. One of the ways to avoid getting stuck in the numerical mire is acquiring adequate analytical tools that will better inform your potential purchase. Their first task is foregoing the numbers for their mere numerical values, in favor of making sense of what they tell you in the easiest and most actionable manner. Thankfully, website buyers of today are blessed with an abundance of quality tools that will streamline their site evaluation procedures for the sake of driving their purchasing efforts forward.