10 Leading Tools for Free Website Analytics
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Every website owner or marketer needs to know what is going on with their website and visitors to know how to improve their results. Website analytics tools can provide data and show trends that will help you to know what to do to see the results improve over time.
But when it comes to analytics you have a lot of options to choose from. Where should you start looking?
In this post, we’ll show 10 of the best free website analytics to choose from. Of course, there are many options that are not free, but most free resources provide enough info for any size website.
Free Website Analytics
Google Analytics
Google Analytics is leader among free analytics tools, and with good reason. Analytics is free to use on any website with no limits on pageviews that can be tracked or reports that can be generated. Basic users can get info on how many visitors and pageviews their site is receiving, what sources are sending the traffic, what search phrases are resulting in visitors, and other basic information like bounce rate. More advanced users can set up goal tracking, create custom reports, set up pivot tables and more. For new users Analytics can be a little intimidating because of how much data is available, but the basic reports are easy to find and understand.
HitTail
Longtail keywords are easiest to hit but tough to plan. The HitTail metrics reporting app can help you determine which longtail keywords are already ranking well for your site, and which might be best to target for driving future traffic.
Piwick
Piwick is an open-source real time analytics program. Piwik aims to be an open source alternative to Google Analytics, and is already used on more than 150,000 websites. Piwik is a PHP MySQL software program that you download and install on your own webserver. Because of this, the installation process is a little more involved than Google Analytics, but for those who do not like the idea of sharing all of their data with Google, Piwick is a good alternative.
KissMetrics
The leading tool for customer intelligence and user experience studies, KissMetrics is the best way to tracke visitor actions on your website. Analytics reporting is geared towards marketers who want to improve numbers like bounce rates or CTA click-throughs.
GoingUp!
GoingUp! provides a variety of useful information through features like basic web stats, traffic trend analysis, user profile data, actions and goals, heat maps, inbound link monitoring, Google PageRank tracking, Alexa rank tracking, keyword density tools, page optimizer tools, and more.
StatCounter
StatCounter offers real time stats for free to websites that receive fewer than 250,000 pageviews per month. Paid plans start at $5 per month. StatCounter provides all of the stats you would expect to find, like referral sources, popular pages, entry pages, exit pages, keyword analysis, browser stats, operating system stats, resolution stats, and more.
Woopra
Woopra is a paid analytics program that also offers a limited free plan. With the free plan you can track up to 30,000 pageviews per month and data will be retained for 3 months. Campaigns, funnels, segmentation and email reports are not available on the free plan. One of the unique features of Woopra is the live chat that allows you to interact with your site’s visitors.
Linktrack
Linktrack provides real time stats like ad tracking, click tracking and impression tracking. You’ll use Linktrack to create a link and it will track and report on the link’s activity. A free plan is available, as well as premium plans starting at $6.95 per month.
SmarterStats
SmarterStats is analytics software from SmarterTools. A free version is available as well as professional and enterprise editions. The free version is well loaded, but it doesn’t allow multiple sites per server like the professional and enterprise editions.
AWStats
AWStats is one of the most popular alternatives to Google Analytics, and it comes installed on many hosting accounts. It is completely free and is distributed under the GNU General Public License. AWStats provides detailed information on your visitors, browsers used, operating systems used, and screen size in addition to typical stats like visitor and pageview counts.
