o’neill media

Over the past week or so I’ve been in search of the perfect web analytics program to do one simple task. Calculate my ROI on my ad campaigns. I have to say that it is appaulling how bad these web analytics companies are, and how much one needs to spend to get some decent results. Some of the Programs I have been testing are Click Tracks, KeywordMax, NetTracker, IndexTools and probably 5 - 10 more that I had the unfortunate necessity to test. The difference between these solutions is extremely minor. And none look like they have had a serious upgrade since the dot com bubble.

With all the great stuff that’s happening in the low-end analytics world like Measuremap, Mint, and Crazy Egg I’m surprised to see how little progress is being made with the high-end packages (excluding the extremely expensive players like Omniture, Coremetrics, WebTrends and Websidestory which I didn’t test, but I’m sure there is something to them to be worth 10k for a license).

Overall I think Click Tracks had the best UI and was the best paid solution (the professional version), there are a few bugs with the system, but it’s pretty much on par with google analytics which is free. After all my research I’ve found that the combination of Google Analytics and Statcounter (another free software) was the best solution and gave me all the information in the way I want to see it.

This is how the analytics software outlook plays out for novice users that don’t need very much revenue tracking, use statcounter until there is something that you feel you are missing (like historical reporting). For the intermediate user with a low-budget, use google analytics if you can handle not having any support, or Click Tracks if you need some hand-holding. For the enterprise / big-business users, try the low-cost options, and if there are more advanced features you need build them yourself. You can have a good coder build an online app exactly to report exactly what you want for $5,000 - $7,000.