Cloud Hosting Blog

1. Any THC webhosting plan comes with an integrated web analytics program that shows you valuable traffic data called AWStats. The program is not the most popular on the Web, but it does have features that make it superior to other web analytics programs such as separate logs for visits of robots, worms attacks and number of times your site is added to favorites bookmarks. Since you already have a web anaylitics program integrated with your hosting plan you might believe that using other services is pointless. If you think this you are wrong.

You’ll see that Google Analytics is missing from the list. This was done on purpose – as I believe you are already familiar with the program. However you’ll find here some web analytics tools that help you boost your AdSense income and some other that will generate some revenue through affiliate programs.

2. No web analytics program is perfect. Most of them give enough data to help you make a decent statistic that will enable you to identify what aspects of your website you need to optimize to increase your ROI. If you want even more accurate results you have to use at least two analytics programs in parallel. For very large sites with thousands and thousands of hits by the hour, free web analytics tools are pointless because they only show stats for a limited number of page loads.

3. For example, StatCounter is aimed at sites that have 250000 or less page loads per month and shows detailed analytics only for the last 500. This is a good tool for real time analysis, but useless for collecting in depth data, of course unless you are ready to spend some time at the end of each day and save the detailed reports. Not too productive if you ask me.

4. If you want a web analytics program that is different from all the rest (although in its free variant doesn’t offer too much data) give ClickTale a try. ClickTale shows you movies of visitors’ every mouse movement, every click and every scrolling action. The advantage is that you can then understand what your visitors are really interested in and also understand how they read your pages. This is perfect to determine eventual changes or to test which are the best placements for the ads, links, etc.

5. For bloggers and small sites Clicky is a nice option. On the landing page you’ll see that compared with its competitors Clicky has more features and even an affiliate program that makes you cash. For WordPress users, there is even a Clicky plugin.

6. 103bees focuses on natural search analysis and it’s an ideal tool for SEO purposes. You’ll learn exactly what keywords drive visitors to your website and even boost your AdSense income.

7. Crazy Egg was born from the need to prioritize web accessibility. If you want to know what’s hot and what’s not on your site this is a very good tool – almost comparable with ClickTale which is far more valuable due to its somehow didactic value (it teaches you how to read your web analytics data).

8. MyBlogLog – if you are a user you probably know about the web analytics service. It’s simple and the features are no rocket science. It only shows you traffic stats, online clicking habits and referral links.

9. Site Meter is a popular tool that starts free but requires payments for advanced features. The most annoying part about this tool is that it actually forces you to place a visible site meter counter on your site in its free version. If you don’t care about your design and the fact that the badge will give away web analytics data to your visitors… you can use it. Site Meter is inferior to StatCounter and Clicky.

10. ShinyStat is very similar to StatCounter – and in its free version offers detailed analytics for up to 1000 page loads per day. However, the data is not complete: on the features page you will see that the most important features are not available (all these features are free in StatCounter).

If you want web analytics stats delivered straight to your desktop, download Snoop.