Blog Analytic Tools
Yesterday we wrote about some of the tools you can use to measure traffic on your blog. Measuring this traffic is imperative to the success of your blog. If you are just writing post after post and you have no idea if "anyone" is reading it, you have been wasting time.
What if you could tell:
- how many people have read your post
- how many have shared your post
- where visitors come from
- how many pages they read
- what topics interest them the most
Wouldn't this information be helpful? You could start writing blogs about stuff that people actually want to read and post it at a time when the most people are looking online. That would be great information to have, hey?
So yesterday I spoke about the ActiveRain stats feature, Google Analytics and Jetpack Plugin for Wordpress. Then I got tired!!! There are lots of tools you can use. I won't go into as much detail in this post so you can get on with your work. Some of these tools are free and some you have to pay for. It will depend on how much information you would like to get back. Obviously you will find that most Paid Tools offer better analytics, but I will try to give you tools that are not too in-depth because you don't have the time (nor the desire, I'm sure) to sit and analyze stats when you can be making money!
Here are a couple more options to choose from:
Open Web Analytics. This is a free, open source tool that must downloaded and installed on your own server. You can track an unlimited number of sites and there are no "traffic limits". It also comes with conversion goals, heatmaps and even mouse movement tracking.
Piwik. Like OWA above, this is a free, open source tool and must be installed on your own server. AND you can upgrade to the pro version if you don't get enough info and the data is updated in real time.
Clicky. Clicky is VERY user friendly. There are a couple third-party WordPress plug-ins available for Clicky making it easy to implement and view stats right from your WordPress dashboard. Additional detailed stats are available with advanced features by logging into the Clicky Website.
AWStats
AWStats is considered to be one of the most amazing web analysis tools on the Web that will analyze log files coming from services such as HTTP, FTP servers and streaming media. Their main interface consists of a single page that is divided into different sections, each providing a summary of statistical data. These include daily visits, list of referrers, search terms etc. These stats are automatically updated on a daily basis. It gives you the option of viewing a month by month traffic report, or you could also view the annual statistics.
Cons:
- It does not provide an in-depth analysis of data so it is recommended that you use this alongside other tools.
- Although Awstats identifies most common bots and avoids the mistake of counting it as a visitor, there are some bots it is still not familiar with, thus, incorrectly counting them as visitors and causing discrepancies in the visitor count.
You need some type of analytics tool in order to attract advertisers & create an effective plan to grow your blog, you’ll need to know things like:
- How many visitors do you get every day? Every month?
- How many of those visitors are new? How many are repeat visitors?
- What’s the most visited page on your site (and how can you take advantage of that)?
- Which of your email newsletter signup forms works best?
- Are your call-to-action buttons all working, or are any of them in the wrong spot?
You can probably get most of this information from any of the programs I mentioned here. However, you can choose to pay for something stronger that does more. Check out any of these programs:
KissMetrics, Chartbeat, Mint, Site Meter. You can pay from $0 - more than $10,000 for a program. But basically your needs are not that high. You can get what you want and need from any of the free programs!
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