Web analytics is the measurement, collection, analysis and reporting of web data for purposes of understanding and optimizing web usage.
Web analytics tools can meet your need for a comprehensive and filtered view to help you determine how users utilize digital channels such as the Web, mobile Internet, and social media.
Web analytics tools are not used just for measuring web traffic, but they are also used for business and market research, as well as to evaluate and enhance the effectiveness of websites.
Mobile analytics are used to measure the mobile web and mobile apps. The mobile web refers to internet usage or accessing the Web and web-based services through tablets or smartphones to browse online content with mobile browsers.
Web Tracking Tools
It is essential that you keep tabs on your website and what is happening on it, who is visiting your page, and which pages are giving you the best conversions.
There are a number of conversion tracking and optimization tools available to help you track all this and more. Some of these conversion tracking tools include:
Google Analytics
A free web analytics service that is used for tracking and reporting website traffic. It is a conversion tracking tool.
It provides data visualization tools like dashboards, scorecards and motion charts, which enable segmentation for subset analysis and helps in generating custom reports and integration with other Google products.
Google Analytics is the most popular analytics tool, used by a majority of web analysts and site administrators. A very powerful tool, it is the industry standard for all analytics tools.
Mixpanel
This is another free conversion tracking and optimization tool that has a premium paid advanced analytics platform that is ideal for both mobile and web.
It is basically used for analyzing actions people take in apps, so it is a tool for measuring actions and not page views. Actions can be defined as anything, and are called “events” in Mixpanel.
Mixpanel is easy to set up; all you need to do is define events and properties specific to your business. Property is additional information about events that are specific to your business.
You can tie data to your users, which is called profile. Profile allows you to locate clearly defined groups of users and know them and their preferences better.
KissMetrics
This paid analytics platform is ideal for small and medium-sized companies. KissMetrics is very simple to use and has an easy-to-track customer conversion process.
It is easy to pinpoint and discover where you’re acquiring potential customers and where you need to make adjustments.
KissMetrics helps test your key concept, events (user interactions or activities you want to record), metrics (quantitative measure of the event) and conversions.
Heap
If you are looking for instant, retroactive analytics, then Heap is the one for you. A great conversion tracking tool, it captures all user actions on its own from apps on the Web and iOS and lets you measure them.
It has a very simple interface and does not need any code. It provides you with a full, retroactive analysis. It allows you to display every single action that a user preformed on your app or site.
Heap recreates funnels that let you understand the holes in your funnel through which your users drop out.
Mobile Tracking Tools
Conversion tracking and optimization tools for tracking of mobile apps and mobile web include:
HasOffer/Tune
This is a performance marketing solution that lets you create your own mobile and online ad network. You can manage campaigns, creatives, and publishers, all in real time.
You can also trace your digital marketing spending to get valuable insights and get information to enable you to make real-time decisions based on actionable data. It is also versatile and lets you build a custom platform with two-way API functionality.
HasOffer/Tune can be integrated with other internal systems and gives you the capability of building your own apps.
AppsFlyer
This helps you in mobile app tracking and attribution analytics and is a great tool for mobile advertising. It can measure all your campaigns and give you the results on a single dashboard that displays real-time results.
AppsFlyer is a conversion tracking tool that can be easily integrated with over 900 partners, including Facebook and Twitter. It can trace and improve social campaigns that run on ad networks on mobile apps and mobile web.
AppsFlyer is a native tracking technology with a patent pending at the time of writing this article. It uses a number of different identification methods that take decisions in real time.
Adjust
This is an attribution and analytics tool for mobile apps. It provides mobile app marketers with a platform for business intelligence.
It helps you identify the source of your user acquisitions and which of your referrals are the most valuable in diverting traffic that is valuable to your website.
Adjust has a single web-based dashboard and provides you with reports that can be downloaded.
Flurry
This is a free tool for mobile analytics that is easy to use and quick to integrate. It provides you with in-depth understanding of app performance metrics and all the actions of your users on your app and web.
It can track your user acquisition campaigns and then tie them back to analytics to maximize ROI. It can help you optimize the mobile experience by helping you create better apps and personal ads.
Flurry provides you with a deep understanding of mobile consumers.
Google Mobile Analytics
This is perhaps the best app analytics for today’s world that is always on. It helps you identify new and relevant users.
It informs you of the users of your apps in real time, the devices that they are using, their location and other pertinent details to allow you to engage your users.
Google Mobile Analytics provides you with real-time reporting to display who is using your app. You can measure impact and also set and track the goal conversions you most desire.
Heatmaps and Customer Intelligence
Heatmaps are important; they help users analyze and understand complex data and present them as maps where the values are color coded for easy understanding.
Some of the most popular heatmaps and customer intelligence tools include:
CrazyEgg
This is a heatmap, scrollmap, overlay and confetti tools all rolled into one powerful tool.
It lets you identify the most popular elements of a page, tells you which parts of pages are working and which are not, and gives you greater insight into the activities of your users on your page on mobile as well as full websites.
CrazyEgg shows you the elements that your users are engaging with, what they are clicking, whether they are scrolling and also where most of your traffic is being generated from.
Intercom
This is a simple customer communication tool that you can use to relay targeted messages to visitors to your website and users of your app.
You can easily see your customer demographics and track their activities on your app and website.
Intercom helps you communicate with your visitors so they can be converted to customers, and engage and control new signups to become active customers.
It helps you get quality product feedback from the right customers and streamlines support for your team and your customers.
Intercom integrates well with most major platforms such as web, iOS, and Android.
Customer.io
Customer.io also enables you to send sophisticated messages to your website or app users while leveraging tracking data based on their interactions or actions they did not perform. That history is often used to tailor each customer’s experience. Compared to Intercom, Customer.io is more based on email messaging where Intercom also enables in-app messaging. A related customer interaction tools comparison thread on Quora digs a little deeper into the topic.
Advanced or Lesser Known Tools
There are other tools that are just as good but less popular. Some of these tools are advanced and pro versions. These are:
Keen.io
This is a custom analytics tool that collects all the data you may want in order to find the answers you seek.
Keen IO lets you collect data quickly from any source and collect the exact data you need for your analysis. It helps you analyze, visualize and seek answers from your data.
It also represents the data as charts and metrics that can be embedded.
Keen IO is a great tool for extracting data easily and effortlessly.
Omniture (Adobe)
This is a marketing and web analytics service that familiarizes you with your customers and collects all the data and content in a single place. It helps you provide the ideal experience to each of your customers.
Omniture is a part of Adobe Marketing Cloud, which provides you with a complete set of marketing solutions. You can create tailored campaigns and administer content and properties through this amazing tool.
Piwik
If you want to know more about your users and their behavior on your website, this is the tool to have.
Piwik gives you comprehensive information about your visitors, where they came from and which of your pages they visit most and how often they visit, and which of your marketing campaigns are the most successful.
Piwik gives you valuable insights that can help your business or readership grow.
Conversion Tracking and Optimization Tools Put Into Perspective
Web and mobile analytics is great for developing an online web and mobile strategy and user experience. It helps you understand your users, their demographics and their activities on your website or app.
It also provides you with deep insights into the process of achieving your business objectives.
Most of the conversion tracking and optimization tools and services have free plans. Give them a try and pick out the ones that suit your needs best.