Complete Web Monitoring

Choosing an Analytics Platform

Once you’ve factored in the collection methods, kinds of reports, and testing capabilities you’ll need for your analytics, it’s time to choose a platform.

Free Versus Paid

Eric T. Peterson (http://blog.webanalyticsdemystified.com/weblog/2007/07/the-problem-with-free-analytics.html) concluded that if you’ve deployed a free analytics solution, you’re probably:

• Only casually making use of web analytics

• Understaffed in the analytics department

• Lacking experience with web analytics in general

Far from criticizing free tools themselves, Peterson makes the point that you’re much more likely to take analytics seriously if you’ve paid for it. What’s more, you get what you pay for—free tools provide information, but require much more manual effort on the part of marketers to make and test their changes. In a small organization, analytics often becomes a lower priority than selling or design.

When you pay for something, you’ll have access to support, and you may even be able to impact the road map of the product, depending on how common your request is or how much clout you have with the company providing the service.

On the other hand, Brian Eisenberg, CEO at FutureNow, Inc., says:

My philosophy has always been to “get good at free then pay.” There’s no sense paying for something until you really operationalize its use. With today’s free tools offering 65–85% of the functionality of high-end tools, I am not sure free is only for the causally involved. About 30% of paid ...