In a past life, I used to do a ton of analysis on website visitors and usage. Well, I still do actually, but for my own purposes. You see, if you run any website, this is something you need to pay attention to.

It doesn’t matter if you’re running a local real estate blog, a large multi-broker website or a massive real estate information portal – knowing what people are doing, where they come from and why they visit is extremely important. Using an analytics tool for your website is vital for growth and for increasing your business.

So, you know you need to do something, but the tool you use might vary depending up on the need. After all, there’s no reason to nail that picture to the wall with a sledgehammer. If you’re running a large site, and need to ensure that you get the best ROI, a tool that can do the heavy lifting for you is important. However, if you’re running a blog or small site, some basic information is all you need.

Many of us used to use server-side stat tools to parse our log files, however in this case I’m going to cover just the tools that use a piece of embedded Javascript.

Tools for Serious Analysis
Google Analytics
I use this for a number of websites due to it being a comprehensive tool that allows me to run multiple sites through the same control panel. It’s a free tool that gives you a great amount of detailed information about what users are doing and where they came from. You have the ability to create funnels and track usage down specific tracks. If you run Google AdWords, there is tight integration with your campaigns. One thing that I don’t like is that it’s not real time, it is updated once every 24 hours.

GetClicky (pMetrics is a white label)
A tool that was designed for people who make money through their websites. I added it here because I wanted to show a tool that had real time statistics and that also gives an incredible amount of detail on each user that visits the site. For small sites it’s free, but large sites can cost up to $5.99 month.

Specialized Tools
CrazyEgg
If you want to see a heatmap of where your visitors are hovering on your site and what they do, this is a good tool.

103Bees
Offers a much more detailed analysis of the SEO value on your site. What keywords are driving them and where you rank in the search engines for those keywords.

Mint
Only if you use a Mac. Personally, I like using Mint a lot for my blog. It gives me a quick overview of what’s happening.

FeedBurner
This is a good tool for monitoring your RSS feeds if you have a blog. They also provide some very useful tools that help syndicate your content. Their web statistics package is very strange though – the numbers just don’t add up. Stick with their feed tools.

WordPress Stats Plugins
If you run a WordPress blog, and you want to install a simple plugin to do this for you, try WordPress.com Stats, WP-Stats, or Open Web Analytics . If you would like tighter integration between FeedBurner and Google Analytics that generates WordPress reports, try the Google Analytics and Feedburner Reports Plugin.

[Updated: pMetrics is just a white label of GetClicky, a much more reliable alternative.]

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