Recently there was a story on the ABC News web site regarding web analytics. While this story is good for those that have had no exposure to web analytics, the real value of the article to me is that perhaps web analytics is starting to become a more mainstream, accepted practice. From personal experience, many online business owners still don’t use web analytics to make decisions, and many don’t use web analytics at all. In fact, many people still just want to know how many “hits” they get, which when taken alone is worthless data. (If you want a designer’s take on hits, read the more candid Smiley Cat post dealing with hits).
There are now two good free analytics solutions for those wanting to dig deeper and learn more about the many design and marketing intricacies of your web site. There’s Google Analytics, which I’ve spoken at length about, and now there’s a new free service from Clicktracks called Clicktracks Appetizer. While I haven’t installed and used this yet, I have experience with the Clicktracks Analyzer package and was very happy with the data I got from it. Additionally, there’s a new, more specialized package called CrazyEgg that is due out this month.
