Web analytics: above and beyond Google Analytics

Does your company use Google Analytics to analyze its website traffic? Google Analytics is one of the most popular, if not the most popular, website analytics tools available today. It’s not the only such tool, however, nor the most powerful. Several web analytics tools you can use to supplement Google Analytics—and several go well beyond what Google Analytics can do.

Key takeaways

• Web analytics track visitors to your website and their onsite behavior

• Google Analytics is the most popular web analytics tool available today—and it’s free

• You can use a variety of tools to supplement Google Analytics’ reporting, including Clicky, Hotjar, Hubspot, Mixpanel, Optimizely, Raven Tools, SE Ranking, SEMRush, Smartlook, and Statcounter

Understanding web analytics and Google Analytics

Web analytics uses various tools to track website visitors and their behavior. The goal is to use that data to improve the user experience—and encourage those users to stick around on your site for longer periods.

Google Analytics is one of the longest-lived website analytics tools available today. Google launched Google Analytics in 2005 and has steadily grown its user base since then. Google Analytics is the most popular web analytics tool today, used by more than half of the top 10,000 websites. 

Google Analytics is free to use. Website developers insert a short snippet of code on each page to track a variety of important metrics, including:

• Users
• Sessions
• Pageviews
• Average time on page
• Bounce rate
• Entrance points
• Exit rate

How to go beyond Google Analytics with other web analytics

Google Analytics is good for tracking basic web metrics, such as number of visitors and bounce rate, but other tools offer more in-depth traffic analysis. When you want to know not just how many people are visiting your website but who they are, where they’re coming from, and what they’re doing while they’re there, check out these other web analytics tools. You can use these tools, presented here in alphabetical order, in conjunction with or instead of Google Analytics.

Clicky

Clicky tracks many web analytics in real time. It tracks many of the same fundamental metrics as Google Analytics but offers several additional analytic tools, including uptime monitoring, visitor and action logs, and heat mapping. It’s a privacy-focused web analytics tool and is fully GDPR compliant. 

Clicky offers a free plan with limited functionality and more full-featured paid plans that run from $9.99 per month on up.

Hotjar

When you want a better understanding of how visitors navigate your website, consider Hotjar. This web analytics program uses various tools to track the customer journey, including conversion funnels, heat maps, and user recordings. 

Hotjar’s Basic plan is free, with paid plans running from $32 per month.

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Hubspot

Hubspot is a justly popular all-in-one web and marketing analytics tool. It goes beyond basic web analytics to include customer relationship management (CRM), lead generation, marketing automation, and customer feedback management. Its web analytics features include:

• Adaptive testing to optimize your website’s performance
• Content attribution reporting to analyze the impact of your website
• SEO recommendations

Hubspot offers a free version with limited functionality and several paid versions, starting at $25 per month. 

Mixpanel

Mixpanel augments Google Analytics with a full suite of powerful product analytics. These product analytics, designed to improve product development and convert more users, include:

• Account funnels
• Data management
• Event tracking 
• Group analytics
• User behavior analytics

The basic Mixpanel plan is free, with more fully-featured plans priced at $25 per month and up.

Optimizely

Optimizely is a digital experience platform that includes, in addition to other useful features, robust web analytics. The Optimizely platform includes a headless CMS, media management, project management, personalization, A/B testing, and AI-generated insights.

Optimizely offers a variety of plans for different uses, including plans for:

• Content management
• Content marketing
• Ecommerce
• Feature experimentation
• Web experimentation 

Raven Tools

Raven Tools automates SEO and marketing reporting. You identify what you want in each report, and Raven Tools runs those reports automatically when you specify. The latest version includes deeper competitive insights and enhanced visualization.

Raven Tools offers different versions for different-sized businesses. Plans run from $39 per month to $399 per month.

SE Ranking

SE Ranking is an all-in-one SEO tool that offers many important web analytics features. Its SEO functionality includes the following:

• Backlink checking and monitoring
• Competitive SEO/PPC research
• Insight website auditing
• Keyword grouper
• Keyword rank tracking
• Page changes monitoring

SE Ranking plans run from $39.20 to $191.20 per month.

SEMRush

SEMRush might be the second most-used web analytics tool after Google Analytics. It’s also one of the more expensive tools—but well worth it, according to many users. 

SEMRush is a powerful tool that includes both SEO and web analytics functionality. SEM Rush tracks: 

• Backlink gap
• Display advertising
• Keyword gap
• Organic keyword and traffic 
• Paid keyword and traffic 
• Position tracking
• Social media

In addition, SEMRush’s “drag and drop” reporting makes it easy to create powerful custom reports with just a few clicks of the mouse. Pricing runs from $119.95 per month to $449.95 per month. 

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Smartlook

Smartlook moves beyond web analytics into the world of behavior analytics. It records user sessions on your website and combines them with powerful event-based analytics to qualitatively track user behavior. You’ll learn the following:

• Where users drop off
• Why users drop off
• How users use your site
• Most crucial page elements

Smartlook works with Google Analytics and other web analytics tools. There’s a free version available, along with paid versions running from $39 per month on up.

Statcounter

Statcounter is an easier-to-use version of what Google Analytics offers. It tracks basic web analytics via an easy-to-use dashboard and simple interface. Use Statcounter to track page views, visitors, sessions, and other key traffic metrics. There’s even a live visitor feed to watch what users do on your site in real-time.

Statcounter offers two versions a free Basic plan and a Premium plan that costs $18 per month. 

Get web analytics PLUS with Optimizely 

Optimizely supplements Google Analytics with a full range of analytics for B2B and B2C e-commerce, content management and marketing, and feature and web experimentation. Our visual editor lets you easily make changes to a web page without coding. You can even launch A/B tests with the click of a button and analyze the results with our sophisticated statistics engine. It’s all about identifying the right content for your users—and then optimizing it to maximize monetization.

Contact Optimizely today to learn more about optimizing your conversion rate with A/B testing.