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I have been tempted to the free web stats package that is Google Analytics having been a massive fan of Hitslink for so long, which costs from $10 per month.

Cost wasn’t the main reason though. I have always been put off by Analytics delay in delivering results and it’s more generic feel. It does what I guess it should - displays less specific reporting information to gather trend data.

There are pros and cons for both systems however:

Hitslink

Pro

• It’s real time allowing you to be very responsive*
• Easy interface allows you to drill down into the nitty gritty data
• More comprehensive reporting with multiple graph views for data - houry, daily, weekly, monthly, etc.

Cons

• It costs - prices start at $10 per month - e-commerce measurement is more expensive
• Can’t discern between pay per click and natural search traffic
• Code needs hacking to deal with pay-per-click visitors otherwise each PPC visitor page is seen as different from the actual page, confusing the stats

(* I find this very helpful with a new e-commerce solution to track where a specific order came from. This feature also helped me sell a lot of a specific product once when it was reviewed one Sunday morning in a newspaper magazine.)

Analytics

Pro

• Free and easy to set up
• Ability to set goals allows you to optimise your site more effectively.
• Integrates with Pay Per Click automatically -allowing you to measure natural vs. PPC visitors

Cons

• It’s about three hours behind real time
• The data is sometimes to generic, requiring you to keep drilling down too far
• Lack of incremental reporting - ie. month on month

Summary

I find my transition to Analytics works very well with standard websites, but I feel uncomfortable with the delay in reporting for my e-commerce sites and would tend to actually run both. This isn’t the best answer as it may slow down the website running the stats.

The delay of reporting that Analytics has, has allowed me to to take a bigger picture view of my websites checking stats once a day, rather than every few hours.

Every person who cares about success on their website should be measuring their stats. Analytics is a great product, especially the price tag, and delivers data that, without a doubt, can help you improve your website. Any start-up should load this product and learn how it works.

However, when it comes to e-commerce, my nerves tell me to have Hitslink for the real time response. There’s nothing like running a sale alongside an e-mail campaign and adapting the messages as results happen.