Hurol Inan is the author of "Measuring the Success of Your Website," which is a very well-written generalized work on Web analytics. His book makes good use of examples to help you understand the key concepts. Subscribe to his "Attuned: Web Analytics Newsletter" and enjoy his extensive collection of articles, glossary, website recommendations and various other resources.
ClickTracks literally changed the way we look at Web analytics by displaying site visitors' actions, paths and points of conversion as numbers overlaid on top of your actual website pages. Now a standard feature from most industry players, this "right-brained" approach puts you in the shoes of your site traffic. It allows you to easily spot stumbling blocks and improve the actual architecture of your site to increase conversion rates. One of their rules of engagement is: "The user of ClickTracks must be able to download, install, and get productive results in their lunch break, sandwich in hand." The ClickTracks line of software includes ClickTracks Analyzer, ClickTracks Hosted, ClickTracks ISP and ClickTracks Professional. A trial run is available at the site.
ClickZ, a division of JupiterMedia, offers numerous columns about Internet marketing in addition to regular columns on Web analytics. The "Actionable Analysis" and "Analyzing Customer Data" columns (which can be found in the Customer Relationships category) are often filled with great actionable insights on the use and understanding of Web metrics.
The Conversion Rater blog covers tools, articles and resources to help you improve your conversion rates, which obviously includes the world of Web analytics. At the time of this writing, we found reviews of Web analytics services, speculations on mergers and acquisitions in this Web metrics industry, which has been going through tectonic shifts as of late and links to all the latest articles and primers on the subject of using metrics to improve your site's performance. Click on "Web Analytics" or "Google" for the latest on-topic posts or sign up for the RSS feed at the site.
Coremetrics helps etailers create a 360-degree view of their customers from a Web analytics perspective. The company's flagship product, Coremetrics 2005, captures and stores all customer and visitor clickstream activity to build LIVE (Lifetime Individual Visitor Experience) Profiles that serve as the foundation for future analysis. This helps target high-value visitors, increase customer lifetime value and create a multi-channel view of customer behaviors. Coremetrics customers also have access to LIVEmark, an industry-specific benchmarking solution built on Coremetrics LIVE Profiles. With LIVEmark, e-commerce executives and managers can precisely measure themselves against industry averages on such key performance indicators as campaign and channel effectiveness, site stickiness and conversion rates.
Jim Sterne has taken the lead in promoting the value of Web analytics. His book entitled "Web Metrics" covers the foundational elements in understanding what Web analytics are and how to use them. Jim is also host to the sensational Emetrics Summit, which will be held in San Francisco, London, Munich, Boston and more in 2007. Don't forget to subscribe to his complimentary newsletter, "Sterne Measures."
We would be remiss if we did not mention Google Analytics, the analytics package formerly known as Urchin. It's available to Google AdWords clients on a complimentary basis if their site has less than 5 million page views a month. However, at the time of writing new accounts are available by invitation only, and if you do want an invitation you do have to ask for one at the site. One of the benefits of this package is that it is completely integrated with AdWords; if you have an AdWords account, you can use Google Analytics directly from the AdWords interface and it is the only product that can automatically provide AdWords ROI metrics without the import of cost data or the addition of tracking information to keywords. It will also track your other campaigns and initiatives. Google Analytics - when and if it becomes available on a larger scale - marks a new era in Web analytics for the "little guy" as offered by the "big guys". As you get more sophisticated in the use of Web analytics you may well want to trade up to a more robust solution that is more tailored to your needs and will cost you some money.
MarketingNPV aims to provide the knowledge, skills and tools needed to help marketing professionals improve decision-making and ROI measurement. Of special interest at the site are several sophisticated, no-cost analytic tools available for download. For example, the Bass Diffusion Model is a forecasting model that assists in preparing new product forecasts when there is no historical data. The Forward ROI tool offers a way to determine the remaining potential of a project which may not have achieved its original objectives. The "Did Advertising Drive Sales?" tool judges the effectiveness of marketing programs such as advertising, couponing, tradeshows and direct mail. More robust versions of many of the tools (which generally plug in to Microsoft Office applications) are available for a fee. While at the site, check out the MarketingNPV Journal, a bi-monthly publication on marketing decision-making. No-cost site registration gives access to the knowledge bank of articles and software and book reviews.
Omniture offers a Web analytics platform called SiteCatalyst that is tightly integrated with their Omniture SearchCenter, which means that your analytics extend to and guide your search marketing, including bid management and keyword analysis across all leading search engines. Marketers can track each click from the keyword to the actual visit and all of the page views in between, allowing for instantaneous campaign changes based on actual ROI data. You can explore how the two disciplines work together in the "Omniture Search SuccessKit", a 20-page PDF primer that quickly takes you from the basics to advanced topics such as multisession activity, latent response and keyword stacking. At the site you can also check out numerous white papers and link to Inside Web Analytics, the blog written by Omniture's Matt Belkin, who is Vice President of Best Practices.
Sawmill is a highly touted log file analysis tool. However, it does much more than log file analysis. Its database includes a huge amount of information that you can access in real-time to configure analytic reports about your website performance. You can use it to answer questions such as where visitors enter your site, which paths they take through the site, where they leave, how long they stay, and more. The product begins at $139(US) per single license, but if you are willing to test the product and submit feedback you can get it at no cost.