When analyzing the benefits of free web analyze systems for your company or paid web analyzer is depended on the purpose and size of the company. Many of the free web analyzer system have much of the same features as the paid ones and the use of them is greatly dependent on if you are in need of qualitative data or quantitative data, the level of tech expertize of your staff and identifying the overall needs/desires of the company. If you do not have a tech savy or someone in your staff who is willing to learn what to focus on and how to use the data to increase your websites appeal it is best to get professional help when dealing with website functionality and appeal to customer/clients. Even when you choose to do it on your own you should at least talk to a web analyst or take a couple of lessons learning about the different systems you can implement and which one is the best system to use. Often times we as business owners typically marry the system connected to our websites cpanel dashboards and continue with life good or bad.
These are a few systems that would be good to familiarize yourself with
–Omniture currently going for 5,000 to 10,000 a month
-Coremetrics made by IBM price is comparable to omniture every price is based on your companies size and desired packages
-Webtrends cost range from 150 to 1,500 a month
-Unica’s Affinium NetInsights which is now part of IBM’s products; a pay per click service
-XiTi has a free version
-Nedstar/comscore low to mid range prices for their data
-Clicktracks multiple different softwares
-Google analytics is free as long as you do not surpass 5 million impressions per month… their are also paid versions of the software
-Yahoo! Web analytics is free also with a few paid version that you can use
All of these systems does a great job depending on what you are looking for and they all do something better than the other, as an individual or company, I suggest you first do an analytics of your companies needs/wants/skills and figure out a POA(Plan Of Action). If you are willing to have a member of your staff become an expert through training and having the opportunity to learn from an experienced web analyser you should. If you are not willing to invest in someone in your staff for whatever reason then you should at least become fairly familiar with the systems data and what to look for in order to come up with a POA for your business. With that being said the choice between a paid vs unpaid system is based again on your knowledge of the system, your budget and the understanding that the people who are looking through the data is the biggest component of the program.
5 questions to ask yourself
1 are the company looking for analyst or a report: If you are looking for a true analyst you should refer to a specialist or have a member of your staff become one. If you are looking for reports then all you need to do is find the importunate information that is needed from the reports.
2 Budget: for obvious reasons a smaller one man/group of bloggers versus a multi million dollar company has different options and different needs.
3 Tech knowledge: Again of you are not familiar with the program you should learn a but on your own and understand having a system beyond your staff skill set is not helping the bottom line.
4 Knowing what features your company needs and wants: A Lot of the data that can be found is mind blowing but a lot of times is unneeded and unnecessary.
5 Knowing what you are looking for: Knowing what insights you are looking for to help the company make the best decisions for the future is a must.
