Your product is
everything
Let professionals find the best product for you to sell on Amazon
Three well known sayings. And it seems apt to start a post on data analytics.
Because, in any business, measuring the success of your content and data is essential to ensure you are making the right choices, based on actual data. Otherwise, you’re flying blind.
To understand absolutely what’s really working on your website, which content your users are actively engaging with, and where they’re bouncing, is key. You can make some really good assumptions, but you are not your customer, and they may have very different ideas to you as to what qualifies as valuable content, and where exactly they want to see it.
A great data analytics tool is going to give you these sure-fire answers. Some are better than others (and there’s a lot out there!). Some have very easy UX interfaces, some are more complex. Your business requirements may be very unique to another businesses’ requirements.
In this article, we delve into some of the key analytics tools on the market today. Offering up a comprehensive source of information on key product features, bad points to the service, price-points, and who these services are best suited to, in terms of type and size of business.
Let’s go.
AT Internet is an analytics suite offering analytical intelligence on:
· Sales Insights
· Browsing Behaviour
· Sharing Insights
· Visitor-Centric Data Analytics
Key Performance Indicators
Calculate your key KPIs, then track your data. Review them to discover valuable insights, and go on to make fast and valuable business decisions. AT Internet delivers huge quantities of pre-designed, default assessments to track your KPIs.
Some of these assessments include campaign analysis, content consumption, traffic sourcing, and more.
Data, Made Easy
Your data is served up quickly, and easily. There is no need to understand or use code using AT Internet.
Action decisions using datasets, which are easy to export and download for further analysis, if required.
Entirely Available Data
Once you have sourced your data, this is effortlessly shared with your team users, with the ability to add comments, and share your KPIs with your team members accordingly. Streamline your business using these easy data sharing tools.
Bespoke Dashboards
The addition of bespoke dashboards within AT Internet’s software is a really useful tool for businesses who need to access data for different parts of their business, and different users.
Multi-Platforms
The analysis provided by AT internet works well across different platforms, be it websites, news pages, eCommerce platforms, and mobile apps.
So what is AT Internet going to set you back, and is it easy to install and get up and running?
Boasting a free, no-obligation months’ trial, the AT Internet Business package kicks off at 355e per month.
What you get in the Business Package:
AT Internet’s Premium package is priced according to each businesses’ individual requirements. And, as such, you’ll need to contact them for a quote.
The Premium package includes:
In terms of link tracking, and reviewing results, this wasn’t an especially easy thing to do. It’s less of an intuitive system than other data analysis services in this respect. With this in mind, AT Internet may be suited to users within a business that are very familiar with data retrieval, as a fair amount of training on such topics may be required otherwise.
The user interface of AT Internet undergoes significant changes, fairly frequently. Unfortunately, for the most part, these changes do not make the overall user experience any improved, or more intuitive.
Implementation of AT Internet is pretty straightforward. And boasting a large support team, who are extremely flexible and respondent, ensures your onboarding and implementation questions are answered quickly, by a real person.
Moving swiftly on.
Chartbeat helps businesses see which parts of their content are keeping their audience interested. Concentrating on analysing content now , rather than the method Google Analytics and the like use, which focus mainly on data and decisions predominantly founded on the historical data of your website.
Chartbeat’s dashboard shows you your analysis in different sections, such as location, authors, and more. And use this dashboard to know how brand-new visitors engage in a different way to your most loyal visitors.
Chartbeat’s Real-Time Dashboard is super user-friendly, and makes it simple to see how your prospective customers are interacting with your content at this moment in time. And that’s over devices, channels and platforms. This enables you as a business owner focusing on your digital marketing to react and optimise your content for maximum audience engagement at peak times, which will make the most difference.
The video dashboard feature enables you to easily see how many visitors are viewing each one of your videos, right now. You can also see which web pages are generating a lot of traffic, but don’t include a video, so you can take action to integrate videos on these particular pages to increase engagement even more.
Chartbeat’s sophisticated video dashboard can even inform you how much of each video is actually being viewed (to the second!), when that particular video is being abandoned, including data on ads, so you can see the effect of your ads on your visitors’ viewing patterns.
Chartbeat stands out from the rest by being able to link website analysis to social media monitoring.
The importance of social media channels like Twitter and Facebook, integrated with data from your website traffic, makes Chartbeat a very powerful tool indeed.
· Quick snapshots of real-time activity
· Premium data based on your Facebook and Twitter activity
· Video dashboard
· Real-time user-friendly dashboard
· In-depth headline analysis
· In-page optimisation tools
· Multi-platform analysis
· Article search functionality
· Multi-touch conversion
· Funnel visualisation
· Custom reports
· Weekly audience perspective
· Daily reports – sent directly to your inbox
We did discover that Chartbeat’s historical reporting doesn’t have quite enough KPI’s for every business for advanced analysis.
Choose between three plans - Basic, Plus and Premium.
The cost varies depending on the plan you choose from $9.95/month - $149.95/month.
Here’s what you get with each plan, in order to make an informed decision:
· Audience insights + visitor frequency
· Browser overlay heatmap
· Content analytics
· Dedicated support & training
· Historical and real-time analysis
· Slack integration
· Editorial reporting
· Historical report building
· In-page analytics
· Mobile app
· Multivariate headline testing
· Multiplatform tracking
· Realtime audience attention data
· Referral sources
· Robust APIs
· Section & author tagging
· Video analytics
· Audience insights + visitor frequency
· Historical and real-time analysis
· Slack integration
· Browser overlay heatmap
· Content analytics
· Dedicated support & training
· Editorial reporting
· Historical report building
· In-page analytics
· Mobile app
· Multivariate headline testing
· Multiplatform tracking
· Realtime audience attention data
· Referral sources
· Robust APIs
· Section & author tagging
· Video analytics
· Historical and real-time analysis
· Slack integration
· Audience insights + visitor frequency
· Browser overlay heatmap
· Content analytics
· Dedicated support & training
· Editorial reporting
· Historical report building
· In-page analytics
· Mobile app
· Multivariate headline testing
· Multiplatform tracking
· Realtime audience attention data
· Referral sources
· Robust APIs
· Section & author tagging
· Video analytics
· Headline testing analysis
· Advanced in-depth queries
· Multi-site analysis
Chartbeat is aimed at middle to large businesses with upwards of 5 million pageviews on a monthly basis, and definitely towards websites with a high volume of internet traffic.
For a more conscious price-point data analysis tool, we considered Mixpanel.
Mixpanel offers a powerful analytics platform, enabling you to understand visitor behaviour, both to your website and other devices. Find out the how, the why, conversions, retainment and engagement opportunities.
· 24/7 live rep support
· Campaign Management
· Goal Tracking
· Site Search Tracking
· User Interaction Tracking
· Pageview Tracking
· Keyword Tracking
· Conversion Tracking
· Multiple Site Management
· Data Discovery
· User Survey Forms
· Predictive Analysis
· A/B Testing
· Performance Metrics
Mixpanel offers very user-friendly set up of funnels and events, and many users have found the step-by-step instructions easy to follow and implement.
You can determine with Mixpanel which channels are optimal for lifetime or long-term retention, so you can focus on these channels, rather than just promote initial conversions.
We loved being able to track a mobile and web user at the same time. As well as this, user-centered tracking integrates business CRMs to the patterns of actual people. This in turn allows you to use Mixpanel to send targeted messages to these actual people, individually or collaboratively.
Building graphs with Mixpanel can be a trifle challenging, and sometimes counter-intuitive. However, video tutorials are available, if you and your team members can allocate some time to watch them, and learn how to use the feature within Mixpanel.
After a free demo experience, Mixpanel offers three price plans: Starter (Free), Growth (from $89/month), and Enterprise (custom pricing)
The Starter package is free for lifetime, and includes
· 1,000 monthly tracked users
· Unlimited employee accounts
· 90-days’ historical data
· Core Analytics
· Exploratory Reports
· Predictive Analysis
· Custom Dashboards for Mobile, Website, TV and Email
· Monitoring and Alerts
· Infrastructure, APIs, and integrations
· Advanced Data Management
· Codeless Maintenance
· GDPR Compliance
The Growth package includes:
· 12 months’ historical data
· Plans up to 25,000 monthly tracked users
· Unlimited Employee Accounts
· Core Analytics
· Exploratory Reports
· Predictive Analysis
· Custom Dashboards for Mobile, Website, TV and Email
· Monitoring and Alerts
· Infrastructure, APIs, and integrations
· Advanced Data Management
· Codeless Maintenance
· GDPR Compliance
Enterprise includes:
· 12 months’ historical data
· Plans up to 25,000 monthly tracked users
· Unlimited Employee Accounts
· Core Analytics
· Exploratory Reports
· Predictive Analysis
· Custom Dashboards for Mobile, Website, TV and Email
· Monitoring and Alerts
· Infrastructure, APIs, and integrations
· Advanced Data Management
· Codeless Maintenance
· GDPR Compliance
· B2B analytics
· Customisable historical data
Mixpanel is most valuable for businesses whose desire is to monitor revenue over a long period of time, and/or understand how their prospective customers view their product and services.
An all-rounder when it comes to data analysis, we examined Clicky’s data analysis services next.
Clicky’s data analysis tool platform is used by nearly 990,000 sites globally for real-time monitoring, analysis, and responding to their website traffic. Clicky offers valuable insights to make content amendments and altering your users’ journey, and how they navigate your website.
· Customised Dashboard
· Spy Feature Updates
· Heatmaps
· Google Search Rankings
· Meticulous Visitor Statistics
· Location Tracer
· Website Uptime Status
· Multiple File Formats
· Twitter Integration
· Video Analytics Tracking
· Action-based Alerts
· Individual User Tracking
All of the data on Clicky is in real-time, and constantly updated.
This enables you always have an overall view of the interactions on your website in real-time, and the changing analytics.
The Spy Feature in Clicky retrieves the data of live traffic feeds. This is a great tool. It integrates users that are currently on your website, visitors who clicked on links (and which ones), visitors who searched for something specific on your website, all in real-time. Hours of fun!
The video tutorials for Clicky’s services are not very thorough, and lack some information. Also, the user interface isn’t as intuitive as some of the other ROI tools on the market.
Clicky is free for a single site with under 3,000 daily page views, and pro-plans are available with access to more in-depth features.
Let’s take a look at the different plans available with Clicky:
· Single Site
· 3,000 daily page views
· Individual visitors and actions
· Real time data
· Basic segmentation
· Customisable dashboard
· API access
· Widgets
· 10 Sites
· 30,000 daily page views
· Individual visitors and actions
· Real time data
· Basic segmentation
· Customisable dashboard
· API access
· Widgets
· Sub-User accounts
· Advanced segmentation
· Engagement reports
· No ads
· Email reports
· Track outbound links
· More data history
· Spy feature
· Split testing
· Better bounce rate
· 10 Sites
· 30,000 daily page views
· Individual visitors and actions
· Real time data
· Basic segmentation
· Customisable dashboard
· API access
· Widgets
· Sub-User accounts
· Advanced segmentation
· Engagement reports
· No ads
· Email reports
· Track outbound links
· More data history
· Spy feature
· Split testing
· Better bounce rate
· Heatmaps
· Uptime monitoring
· 30 Sites
· 100,000 daily page views
· Individual visitors and actions
· Real time data
· Basic segmentation
· Customisable dashboard
· API access
· Widgets
· Sub-User accounts
· Advanced segmentation
· Engagement reports
· No ads
· Email reports
· Track outbound links
· More data history
· Spy feature
· Split testing
· Better bounce rate
· Heatmaps
· Uptime monitoring
· Up to 1,000 Sites
· Up to 20 million daily page views
· Individual visitors and actions
· Real time data
· Basic segmentation
· Customisable dashboard
· API access
· Widgets
· Sub-User accounts
· Advanced segmentation
· Engagement reports
· No ads
· Email reports
· Track outbound links
· More data history
· Spy feature
· Split testing
· Better bounce rate
· Heatmaps
· Uptime monitoring
Clicky works for all businesses, be it small start-ups and blogging sites to larger corporations, who could benefit from the Enterprise package available.
We couldn’t really cover data analytics tools without looking at Google Analytics, could we?
Most probably most universally-used free analytics tool, Google Analytics standard package delivers a thorough, in-depth choice of analytical features, both for standard and mobile-optimised websites.
Google Analytics enables your business to monitor your advertising return on investment, as well as track your social networking platforms and applications.
· Campaign success measuring tools
· Advanced site and app reporting and segmentation
· Mobile app reporting
· Google tag manager
· Cross-device data
· Conversion Tracking
· Custom Dashboards
· Product integrations
· Acquisition reporting
· Audience reporting
· Benchmarking reports
· Performance reporting
· Alerts and intelligence
· Real Time Data
· Custom Reporting
· Traffic Acquisition
· Bounce Rate vs Exit Rate
· Advanced Segmentation
· Flow Visualization
· Social Reporting
· Mobile Device Tracking
· Video Performance Measurement
· Multi-Channel Reporting
· Integration with AdWords
· Data Export & Tracking API
Using the dashboard, you can quickly discover how your visitors are navigating your website, and what they are searching for. Use this data to decide on content additions to your website, and where the best place for it is.
Google Analytics’ content menu shows you in a simple format – which of your pages enjoy the lowest bounce rate, and which have the highest. Work out why your visitors are bouncing more on some pages than others, and consider if your content answers your potential customers queries and concerns.
Deploying Google Analytics leaves training mostly in your hands, so it’s a learn on the job type of situation. Which is well justified, as it’s a free service, however worth bearing in mind if you have a large number of employees who require training.
With Google Analytics, it can be actually quite hard to determine why people are interacting with your online content.
For example, if one of your website pages has a high exit rate, you can assume that there is some kind of error with that particular page. But you can’t find out what that error is using Google Analytics.
It’s one thing to isolate the issue page, it’s quite another to find out what the issue is, before you can start work on fixing it.
Perhaps it was your cta? Maybe that page loads too slowly? Is there a broken link? It could be any number of reasons.
The fact is that you cannot really know for an absolute sure if any of these problems were the ultimate cause of the higher exit rate using Google Analytics.
So, if this is something that is important to you during the course of your research and content data analysis, Google Analytics may not be the tool for you.
For the standard analytics package, it’s free! So for small businesses and start-ups that aren’t in the market currently for spending money on monthly subscription fees, Google Analytics is a good place to start off.
A Premium service option is available to upgrade to, namely Google Analytics 360.
This gives you more advanced data analytics, unsampled reporting, and advanced, customised funnel reporting. We will get to this in a minute, so sit tight.
From individual entrepreneurs and start-ups to small/medium sized businesses, Google Analytics does the job very nicely, and is a great first port of call when it comes to entry level content analysis.
But for larger enterprise businesses, you may want to consider turning to Google Analytics 360, which offers much more in terms of data analysis for higher traffic websites.
Hopefully, from reading this article, it will become apparent how vital it is for you to monitor your website, its content, and its traffic.
Understanding your website traffic, and your website visitors inside out, is key.
So choose a good analytics tool from one of the above, test it out, evaluate your accomplishments with the data the tools have provided you with, alter and adjust if required, and keep your site moving in the right direction.