Google Analytics: Not The Only Helpful Analytic Service In the Marketplace...There are Others.

I am often told it is taboo to not support Google across the the board in all that they do -- and frankly it is hard not to like everything that Google does, as their products and services are excellent.  But.....call me a maverik, I guess, or maybe I am just an entrepreneur's entreprenuer, who loves to help other small businesses and we all love choice.  Well at least some of us do. :-)

Today, I read over at Internet Retailer (CLICK HERE to read full article) about one such small business that seems to be making headway in helping small to mid-sized bsuiness with general onsite performance analytics. Basically, they are competeing against Google analytics in their own way and seem to have found their niche.

I won't edit the article and just let you read it for yourself to draw your own conclusions.

If you want my opinion, I am all for analytics and I am all for choice, even though Google Analytics is generally very good = the free market can be wonderful.  It seems that you can try out www.StatCounter.com for little money and the best part about these type of companies...if it isn't working for you then stop using them...but for my money, why not try them out, especially if they are affordable and have the same functionality...uh oh....I hear Google calling me now....gotta run. -- Ed

From Internet Retailer
September 5, 2007

"Angie Lynch, a former schoolteacher who started her web site Goodforthekids.com a year ago to sell baby and children’s products, is using www.StatCounter.com  to track where visitors come from, what terms they type into search engines and what pages they visit.

That data helped her decide to discontinue advertising on a site that delivered her only five visitors in a month, for instance. She also watches for signs that several visitors are coming from a particular site in a short period, to learn what’s bringing them to her online store. “If it’s from a message board I can post to it, saying I’m the owner of that site and here’s a coupon code,” Lynch says.

Lynch prefers StatCounter to the free Google Analytics program because StatCounter does not put a visible counter on her site. “I don’t want people to be able to compare me to other sites,” she says. “If another site is more popular, they might decide to order from the more popular site.” The site attracted nearly 9,000 unique visitors in August, she says.

Lynch started with StatCounter’s free service, which provides lifetime summary data and a more detailed look at the last 500 page views, but then upgraded to get detailed data on more site visits. For $9 per month, StatCounter provides data on the past 1,500 page views, and prices go up to $29 per month for tracking the last 25,000 page views. Ireland-based StatCounter also earns revenue by placing ads on the user log-in page.

Another small online retailer, Fleur de Lis Fashions.com, is using the free StatCounter service. Rene Fletcher, president of sales and marketing for the New Orleans-based firm that sells apparel, accessories and other items with the fleur de lis that has come to symbolize the hurricane-ravaged city, says StatCounter has provided data showing that the two-month-old site is showing up more in search engines. With more visitors coming to the site through natural search, Fletcher says she has been able to cut back on pay-per-click advertising and focus more on marketing offline, such as with brochures and postcards.

In business since 1999, www.StatCounter.com says it tracks 2.1 million web sites for 1.5 million customers and a total of 9 billion page loads per month."

HELPFUL TIPS FOR THE DAY:

1. Building a web storefront without knowing who is interacting with it, where they are interacting with it on your site, and where they are "finding" your site via adwords, keywords, startegic partner links, blog entries, and other areas where you might be marketing your site is not wise.  Always have some way to track how, when, and where people in the marketplace are interacting with your site.

2. Small to mid-sized businesses MUST use analytics to access all of the hard work you have done building and marketing your websiteand AND there are affordable solutions from which to choose. 

3. Marketing anything and anywhere without "constant" feedback analysis on how your marketing is performing is wasting money.

Comments

[Jason Billingsley]

"Lynch prefers StatCounter to the free Google Analytics program because StatCounter does not put a visible counter on her site."

I think this is a poor quote or a misguided store owner. Google does no such thing. The fact that she has to pay for data at a threshold is sad.

I hope the anti-Google sentiment does not lead to poor business decisions or uninformed ones.