Now that you are online and your company has a great website, what comes next? If you really want to maximize the impact of your website and make sure it was worth your investment, you need to track and analyze your online efforts using web analytics.
How these tools help you?
Web analytics software and social media monitoring tools help you avoid getting lost in data. The key is to set clear goals, isolate which metrics matter to your company and find the tools that will present that information to you simply.
For instance, web analytics applications can help you:
- target your marketing initiatives
- track the success of your search engine optimization efforts
- understand your website visitor experience
- learn what keywords bring in the best prospects
- improve your sales conversion and
- identify trends and improve website usability to maximize your website’s return on investment.
How do web analytics work?
Web analytics applications provide information about visitors to a website. By monitoring statistics such as visitor referrals, navigation paths, page views and geographic location data, you can learn about your visitors. For instance, you can learn whether they came to your website via search engines, ads, e-mails, blogs or affiliates.
The following review focuses on web analytics tools, but keep in mind that these tools are also increasingly incorporating social media monitoring tools. If you prefer to use standalone solutions to keep track of your social engagement, you may want to check our list of free and low-cost social media monitoring tools.
Free and low-cost web analytics tools
There are many tools for tracking your company’s success online. If you are just getting started, you may want to consider the following. (SaaS refers to “software as a service.”)
Revised March 2023
Crazy Egg
Free English French English support French support Data stored in Canada iOS app. Android Cloud or SaaS
Crazy Egg is a paid service that uses heatmaps, scrollmaps, and other visual reports to show you exactly how people browse your site or Shopify store. Whether your goal is to increase sales, subscriptions, or get more pageviews, you can use Crazy Egg’s A/B testing tool to create variations of your site and improve your conversions. A free 30-day trial is available for all plans.
Google Analytics Solutions
Free English French English support French support Data stored in Canada iOS app. Android Cloud or SaaS
Google Analytics enables you to understand how people use your sites and apps, so you can take action to improve their experience. It requires you to create an account and a Google Analytics 4 property. Then, you’ll need to add a data stream (iOS app, Android app or web), and add a Google tag to your web pages. To learn more, you may want to check Google Academy, an online learning platform that provides free online courses for beginners as well as more advanced practitioners.
Lucky Orange
Free English French English support French support Data stored in Canada iOS app. Android Cloud or SaaS
Lucky Orange provides some of the same features as web analytics tools but focuses on conversion rate optimization. The real-time dashboard shows you which sources drove the most conversions. It also provides dynamic heatmaps and session recordings to help you analyze why your website visitors are not converting. Pricing is based on the number of sites and page views.
Mixpanel
Free English French English support French support Data stored in Canada iOS app. Android Cloud or SaaS
Mixpanel provides real-time, event-based analytics for iOS and Android mobile apps and web platforms. While many tools focus on page views, Mixpanel measures meaningful visitor actions such as playing a video, sharing a post, and much more. Its simple interface makes it easy for you to answer your questions about how people are using your site or app without writing SQL queries.
Open Web Analytics
Free English French English support French support Data stored in Canada: n/a iOS app. Android Cloud or SaaS
Open Web Analytics (OWA) is an open‑source alternative to Google Analytics that you need to install on a server. OWA offers lots of statistics presented in a visibly pleasing way and provides heat maps to show you where visitors interact the most. Written in PHP, it also works with JavaScript and offers a WordPress plugin, making it easier to add the code to websites built on that platform.
This table lists applications alphabetically and isn’t exhaustive. Hyperlinks to external sites do not constitute endorsement by BDC of those websites or any information, opinions, products or services expressed or described on them.
Furthermore, the list is only a starting point and excludes applications not offered either in English or in French, or that are neither low cost nor free. When assessing which solution is best for your organization, you will probably consider many other factors.
BDC will review and edit this list regularly. If you offer a similar application and would like us to consider adding your solution, please contact us.
