Which analytics tool should you use for your website?

Andrea V • 2 Dec, 2022 • 8 Min. read

One of the most important things to have in place for your website is the right analytics tool. The right tools helps you measure the effectiveness of your online marketing efforts. It’s all about measuring the right data to ensure a good decision-making basis for your marketing activities. This will help you make better and smarter choices for your company. 

A sea of analytics tools

We use statistics to understand how visitors navigate the website and to improve and develop our information and services. Most people think of market leader Google Analytics when they hear the term “analytics tool” in this context. But there are plenty to choose from. We have made a review of various options so that you don’t have to.

Let’s start with the market leader, Google Analytics, more precisely, GA4.

1. Google Analytics 4 (GA4)

What it’s used for: analyzing website traffic, users, bounce rates and frequency, target conversions, and real-time analytics of the number of website visitors.

This is GA4:

• With e-commerce tracking, you can easily track sales, coupons, offers, shipping prices, and more. GA4’s solutions make it easy to consider your prices and business strategy.

• While Universal Analytics looks solely at the click that led to a conversion, GA4 uses data-driven attribution that looks at the entire customer journey. This allows you to measure effectiveness across several channels and platforms – giving you a more accurate picture of the interaction between different marketing channels and measures.

• For example, a customer has clicked on an advertisement without buying anything. Later, the customer finds the online store through an organic Google search. The customer then goes directly to the website to buy something. A data-driven attribution model will break this conversion into smaller parts. Each of the channels gets some of the “credit” for the conversion. Last click, on the other hand, only looks at the last interaction before the conversion took place.

• GA4 has more privacy settings than UA, like cookie-free tracking and behavioral and conversion modeling.

Our verdict: As of now, Google Analytics 4 is one of the best options on the market. The tool makes it easy to track the entire customer journey through the actions the user takes during the purchase process. GA4 is suitable for all companies that want a holistic measurement tool across platforms and channels.

Read more: Have you had less traffic to your website lately?

2. Matomo Analytics

What it’s used for: Matomo is a free and open-source traffic analytics tool used to measure website traffic and user behavior. Open-source, or “open source code”, refers to a software that gives the user more insight into how it works – meaning that users can correct errors and make improvements themselves.

This is Matomo:

• Matomo is available in over 50 languages, it’s adaptable, and vendor independent.

• The tool offers over 70 integrations with publishing platforms, e-commerce solutions, as well as other mobile and web platforms.

• The biggest advantage of Matomo is ownership of your own data. Unlike externally hosted services (such as Google Analytics, Webtrends, or Adobe Analytics), Matomo is hosted on your own server and the data is tracked in your Mysql database.

• Matomo protects users’ privacy through advanced privacy features and its approach to data ownership.

Matomo (tidligere kjent som Piwik) er et godt analyseverktøy. Dette verktøyet passer til alle bedrifter som har et ekstraordinært fokus på personvern og ønsker å hoste på egen server. Analyseplattformen er gratis. Du kan hoste verktøyet på din egen server eller WordPress-installasjon, eller betale for en skykonto.

3. Fathom Analytics

What it is used for: Fathom is a simple analytics tool that gives you insight into the basic analytics you need, and focuses on privacy.

This is Fathom:

• Fathom has a minimalistic, yet powerful, dashboard with all the important data you need.

• Fathom Analytics provides simple and useful website statistics that focus on user privacy. Fathom collects trends and insights, but not personal information about your website visitors.

• Fathom provides top pages, insight into your most visited pages, bounce rates and frequency, as well as the average time people spend on your website. All of this on a single screen.

• Fathom Analytics offers websites 100% data ownership, full compliance with privacy laws, and complete visitor results through its ability to bypass ad blockers.

Our verdict: Fathom is suitable for companies that need a simple solution without the need for advanced analytics. It covers the basic information about the number of unique visitors, bounce rate, and goal achievements.

4. Hotjar Analytics

What it’s used for: Hotjar is an integrated solution for websites. In order to enhance user experience, the analytics software includes features like heat maps, analytics of visitor movements and time spent, as well as user feedback.

This is Hotjar:

• Provides a visual representation of where visitors click on your website, how far they scroll, and many other usage patterns.

• The tool’s conversion points let you know what elements in the conversion process drive visitors away from your site. 

• Hotjar offers user surveys that allow you to interact with website visitors about why they visit/use the website and what is needed to improve the customer experience.

• Traditional web analytics and usability tools only measure human behavior, such as what a visitor did and didn’t do. Hotjar focuses on identifying why users visit your website and is an intent-based tool.

Our verdict: Hotjar is a tool that helps you understand why your users take certain actions on your site (or why they don’t). The tool is suitable for companies looking for feedback from real users through tools such as heat maps, session recordings, and surveys.

5. SimilarWeb

What it’s used for: SimilarWeb is an online analytics tool that provides traffic and marketing insights of your website.

This is SimilarWeb:

• SimilarWeb offers a clear dashboard that gives you valuable insight. It presents a wealth of data, divided into a “general overview” and eight other calculations: geography, referring websites, search traffic, social, display advertising, audience, similar websites, and apps on mobile.

• SimilarWeb is a tool that estimates the total amount of traffic different websites get. It lets you see your competitors’ top sources of traffic, divided into six main categories, including referral sites, social traffic, and top keywords.

• With SimilarWeb Pro, you get access to a variety of features, including device distribution, audience information, and traffic sharing from various social media networks.

• Digital marketers can use this tool for many marketing activities, including benchmarking, finding potential traffic sources, and more. This tool can be used by business analysts to track and evaluate competitor behavior. Bloggers and website owners can use this tool to understand their business landscape.

Our verdict: SimilarWeb is an analytics tool that is popular in the market. It suits businesses that need to transform raw data into useful metrics and that need to distinguish between organic and paid search, social traffic, and related sites.

6. Adobe Analytics

What it’s used for: Adobe Analytics offers traffic analytics and multi-channel data collection.

This is Adobe:

• Strong focus on machine learning and predictive algorithms for advanced insights.

• Adobe Analytics is one of the best and most in-depth platforms. Adobe Analytics provides you with as sufficient data as the other alternatives on the market.

• The tool addresses segmentation problems that it solves just as quickly, and it gives you the ability to integrate data and create in-depth reports.

• Adobe Analytics is for profitable businesses that need work with marketing and consumer analytics. It’s more expensive compared to its competitors, and it’s much harder to learn compared to Google Analytics, which is the tool’s free competitor.

• Adobe is built to offer the depth of insight you get from traditional analytics tools like Google Analytics. 

Our verdict: Adobe Analytics is a specialized analytic tool for businesses looking for an option to Google Analytics. If you’re looking for multi-channel data gathering across the web, voice, OTT (over-the-top), and IoT (Internet of Things), this tool might be right for your business. 

Do you need guidance? Let Journey assist you

Do you need assistance interpreting your results or are you searching for a new analytics tool? Our knowledgeable experts can help find the best option for your business.

Get in touch if you would like an offer for setting up analytics tools for your company.