If knowledge is power, then when it comes to your small-business website, web analytics is your gym. Programs that allow you to collect, review and analyze all your data — from pageviews, time on site, orders in your e-commerce portals — can help you make your internet presence stronger and hone your site to do exactly what you want it to do.
Web analytics is so important and potent that virtually every large business has one or more people dedicated to using these tools, evaluating data and figuring out how to put that information to work. Small businesses, however, often don’t have the resources to put a full-timer on the case … which means this may just be a DIY projected for the CEO — you.
The good news? There are several web analytics tools that have the small business in mind, delivering features such as easy-to-navigate platforms, tutorials and/or low prices.
Here’s a look:
Google Analytics
Google Analytics is one of the biggest players in the game, offering enterprise-level tools that even the bluest of blue-chip companies wouldn’t turn their nose up at — in fact, some of these companies pay up $150,000 a year for an advanced version of GA tools.
But Google Analytics’ free product is no slouch, offering powerful data reporting and analysis that thousands of businesses use to expand their horizons every day.
Just a short list of the tools you can get through GA: Audience reports that tell you how users interact with your website or how much value they create for your business; acquisition reports that show you how social, ad or search campaigns are affecting how people engage with your site; and conversion reports that tell you whether you have high drop-off rates or examine purchase activity on your website.
CrazyEgg
CrazyEgg is another web analytics suite that doesn’t look to compete with Google Analytics, but instead augments GA with its various features.
For instance, CrazyEgg offers visual reports that literally show you on your page where people are clicking the most and clicking the least; an A/B testing tool that allows you to essentially horse-race changes on your website against each other so you can measure which tweaks best give you the result you’re seeking; and even an editor that allows you to make changes to your website without the need of a developer.
CrazyEgg only offers free 30-day trials; past that, pricing plans start from $24/mo that does include unlimited A/B tests and edits, all the way up to $249/mo for sites that need to track hundreds of thousands of pageviews every month.
Heap
Heap offers a robust set of analytics tools that allows you to measure all sorts of interactions with your website: customer clicks, taps and swipes, plus things such as email analysis from Marketo and transaction data from Shopify. Meanwhile, its many analytics tools help you do things such as optimize your site’s conversion rate (how likely you are to make a sale from an interaction), or determine how frequently users are adopting new site features.
But where this product stands out is that unlike with other analytics tools, Heap doesn’t require you to write code. As a result, many customer testimonials gush about time savings.
You can start Heap with a free account that will track up to 5,000 sessions per month and keep three months’ worth of data history. As you expand, there’s a “lite” option for $299 month that offers more user licenses, more sessions and better support, and once you grow to a certain point, you can negotiate custom plans with Heap to best suit your needs and wallet.
HubSpot
HubSpot stands out because it’s more than just an analytics solution — it offers everything from a content management system (CMS) to analytics to marketing to customer service.
The company’s CMS allows you to create and edit landing pages, site pages, blog posts and even emails – and even offers templates if you’re new to the game. Then you can use HubSpot’s analytics tools to optimize that content for desktop or mobile, or even personalize the content based on geography, what type of device they’re using and more. After that, you can create varying “paths to purchase” to convert page views into real, hard cash.
HubSpot’s different suites come with a range of prices, from its always-free core CRM that includes email scheduling and messaging, to its enterprise-level professional growth suite at $4,200 per month. There’s plenty in between, of course, including affordable small business tiers.
Fullstory
While Fullstory offers a number of analytics tools, where it really stands out is for its ability to capture the user experience. Literally.
Fullstory records user interactions and gives you actual video playback, in regular, double or even quadruple speed — and you can even co-browse with phone or chat support agents. This can tell you where users are having friction with the website, what they’re likely or unlikely to view, and the dashboard can even show you where users “rage clicked” — where they literally showed frustration by clicking multiple times.
Fullstory does offer a light free version, with a professional plan for $199 per month and a custom-priced enterprise version, too.
While web analytics tools are a powerful way to amplify your small business website, they do take time and know-how to implement the right way. That’s why it helps to have a friend who’s already well-versed in these web applications. Mischa Communications offers full website development, which is more than just building your website — it’s testing it, optimizing it and maintaining it over time. That will lead to better visibility, better interaction and, eventually, better sales.
Let Mischa help you make the most of your small business website. Call us at 202-596-7804 or contact us online today!