Which web analytics (Google Analytics etc) tools do you use?

Ranjith
Ranjith
from hyderabad
9 years ago

What are the different web analytics tools that you use? Does it have all the features that you would love to have or are they missing something?

How do you use the analytics data to improve your blog?

 

Replies 1 to 7 of 7 Descending
TF Carthick
TF Carthick
from Bangalore
9 years ago

Can you start the ball rolling by saying something. I had Google Analytics for Lucifer House. Yet to add for Three Realms. Would look at the information and see if people are coming and bounce rate. But then no clue what to do about it.

Ranjith
from hyderabad
9 years ago

I wrote a partial essay and hit the reply button! More than half of that reply went missing!  InnocentFrown

Ranjith
from hyderabad
9 years ago

I wrote the essay again and this time, I myself had pressed the close button by mistake. :((:((:(( It was a very long essay, like CyberKid's :((:((:((

TF Carthick
TF Carthick
from Bangalore
9 years ago

Added Bing Webmaster as well but no clue what to do with it either.

Ranjith
from hyderabad
9 years ago

Bing Webmaster ( and Google Webmaster Tools - which is more useful than Bing) are not web analytics tools. They only tell you for what search terms your blog was displayed in search results and how many times people clicked on those results.

You can use this data to find out what are the things that you write about which people actually search for. ( Search Traffic > Search Queries )

Ranjith
Ranjith
from hyderabad
9 years ago

I use the following web analytics tools.

  • Google Analytics
  • Clicky - Free for upto 3,000 visits per day
  • Piwik - It is like Wordpress Self Hosted. You require hosting for this.

Many here must be familiar with Google Analytics. It is undoubtedly one of the best. As it is from Google, you can safely assume that you will be able to access your traffic data of this day even after 10-20 years.

But there is one thing which I don’t like in GA. It doesn’t tell you what are the pages a particular visitor has viewed on your site. Piwik and Clicky provide this information. (This feature is known as Visitor Log)

The screenshots are for my ICSE Java site (last 17 days) (Click on images for  bigger view)

You can get a list of all your visitors.

 OcDkRLO.png

On clicking a visitor, you can see all his visits.

  eftjVow.png

On clicking a visit, it shows all the pages the visitor viewed during that visit.

  83icHNa.png

This data is highly useful. If you have many visitors who have a high frequent visit count but viewed only two pages (a blog post page followed by home page) or only one page (the home page), it means that you are not blogging as frequent s your readers expect you to do so. You can draw many more similar inferences from the visitor log.

Another thing I don’t like about GA (and Piwik) is that it doesn’t give accurate visit duration. Visit duration for a page is evaluated as the duration between the page load and the next event. So, if a reader visits a page having a long article and reads it for min and closes it, his visit duration will be 00:00 as there were no subsequent events that took place.

This time I first typed in Word and then copied pasted the content here. Cool

The Sorcerer
The Sorcerer
from Mumbai
9 years ago

Only google analytics. 

Ranjith
from hyderabad
9 years ago

Some time ago, you said that you were using Piwik also Innocent

The Sorcerer
from Mumbai
9 years ago

ye I used compete and something else too, but since companies care about GA then that's the only thing I use now and removed the rest. 

Ranjith
Ranjith
from hyderabad
9 years ago

Recently I came across something called session replay. In session replay, the actions of the user - mouse movements, mouse clicks etc are recorded and you can view like later (like a video). Those who want to explore can check out decibelinsight.com (it offers a trial version of 500 sessions per month). 

Nickk Bisht
Nickk Bisht
from Delhi
9 years ago

Currently using google analytics. Still figuring out how exactly it works. I was quite happy to see my bounce rate then somewhere I found less is good Tongue out

Ranjith
from hyderabad
9 years ago

Still figuring out how exactly it works.

Tongue out Basics or things like goals, funnels, events?

Sarath
Sarath
from Bangalore
7 years ago

Try http://www.contextera.com which provides analytics on what your user really liked in your site and shared with his social networks. This information is never avaialable with the normal social sharing plugins/buttons.


LockSign in to reply to this thread