9 Platforms That Allow You to Monitor Your Website's Traffic

Running an online business isn't a walk in the park. It's not just about creating a website, constantly troubleshooting, fulfilling orders, managing customers, and crafting marketing strategies. To truly grow your business, boost sales, and enhance your customer experience, you must dive deep into analytics — and we’re not just talking about checking daily site visits.

With web analytics, you can discover how visitors find your site, observe their journey through your pages, track their next moves once they leave, and even figure out things like how many of them are wearing purple shirts as they browse.

Alright, maybe the purple shirt part is a stretch. But the power of analytics can completely transform your business operations. You’ll identify which referrals and advertising strategies are working, and which ones need adjustments or abandonment. You might even decide to revamp your site to improve conversion rates, or recognize the need to build a mobile app or optimize your site for mobile visitors. Whatever the results, there's plenty to gain — though it requires effort.

With so many analytics tools available, it can be overwhelming. Here are 10 of the top options. Many are free or require minimal investment, so it’s worth exploring to find the one that best suits your needs.

9: Google Analytics

Would you expect anything less than excellence from Google? While there are other programs that offer more in-depth features, Google Analytics leads the market due to its perfect balance of functionality and value. Best of all, it's free — making it a deal you can't beat.

Google Analytics earns high praise for its core features. You can track visitor numbers, traffic sources, devices, locations, social media shares, conversion rates, and user flow. For those who need to dive deeper, it provides detailed data like mobile app users' screen sizes. And of course, it integrates seamlessly with Google's AdWords and AdSense platforms.

On the downside, Google Analytics can be overwhelming due to its complexity, making it difficult to master the entire program. Another common criticism is that its real-time data isn't as quick or responsive as expected. Additionally, some users feel uneasy knowing that Google collects this data, possibly not just for the benefit of the user.

8: Piwik

Piwik is an open-source, self-hosted analytics tool that is often recommended as an alternative to Google Analytics for those concerned about Google's use of their data. Like Google Analytics, it offers a flexible, high-level overview of visitors, tracking where they come from and what they do on your site. It's suitable for any website, from e-commerce to content-based sites, intranet systems, or even government sites. You can either host Piwik on your own server or pay a small fee for third-party hosting.

The drawbacks of Piwik generally revolve around its real-time data and time tracking. Real-time viewer data is available but lacks detail. There's also no reliable way to track how long visitors stay on your site unless they view multiple pages. If someone visits the landing page and leaves without browsing further, you might not even know they visited. Additionally, if you're looking for funnel analytics, Piwik won't provide that — you'll need a different service for that purpose.

7: SEMRush

SEMRush is known for focusing on competition, particularly in keyword research. ("SEM" stands for "search engine marketing.") With a database exceeding 100 million keywords, SEMRush offers a wealth of information for countless websites [source: SEMRush]. Simply input a URL, and you'll receive a list of keywords along with a detailed chart showing the traffic each keyword drives to the site and its search engine ranking. For each keyword, you will also find details such as total results, advertiser competition, and an analysis of trends over the past year. (Google's U.S. version is set by default, though you can change it.)

With SEMRush, you can track your site’s performance while monitoring your competition. You can compare keyword performance for both organic and paid searches, analyze your competitors’ marketing strategies, determine their ad spending, observe daily changes in their positions, and identify other competitors based on keyword overlap with your site. And that's just the beginning. As expected, SEMRush isn’t inexpensive: Prices range from $130 to over $500 per month [source: SEMRush]. You can imagine the amount of data you would get with their highest-tier plan.

6: Parse.ly

Though its name may be a bit unconventional, Parse.ly is a valuable resource for bloggers and owners of content-based websites. Launched in 2012, it serves as a content management system that enables you to optimize your site with detailed insights for each article. Parse.ly analyzes your site's articles by author and topic, identifying the most popular posts in each category and tracking their readers. It also scours your site’s archives to notify you when older posts start generating traffic. By monitoring page views and visitor behavior, Parse.ly helps you optimize content and plan future pieces.

In addition to evaluating the performance of your site, Parse.ly tracks real-time web-wide topic trends, letting you adjust your content based on current popularity. The 2014 update also included the ability to analyze videos and social media posts. While it is an expensive tool, it’s not something casual bloggers typically need. However, if you can afford it, it’s an indispensable tool for content creators.

5: Kissmetrics

While Parse.ly Dash is great for bloggers and content creators, Kissmetrics specializes in helping e-commerce sites fine-tune their conversion funnels (the customer pathways leading to checkout). Its focus is on understanding consumer behavior, tracking user activity across multiple visits, and identifying gaps in the funnel that may be hindering efficiency and costing you sales.

One of the standout features of Kissmetrics is the Path Report, which tracks the specific routes that customers take on your site. This knowledge allows you to identify and fix the areas where users tend to drop off, optimizing the user experience to ensure smoother navigation along the most common paths. With Kissmetrics, you can stay ahead of the game, but remember, as the market changes, you’ll need to keep adjusting your site to stay competitive.

4: Alexa

Alexa, now owned by Amazon, started as a search engine and archive during the early days of the Internet. Today, it focuses entirely on analytics, storing vast amounts of data. It offers traffic statistics for over 30 million websites and attracts millions of unique visitors every month [source: Alexa]. Alexa's most well-known feature is the Alexa ranking, a daily updated comparative traffic listing that ranks websites based on their visitor numbers.

Alexa is often considered a reliable source for comparing sites and tracking overall traffic trends, but there are some concerns about the precision of its data. The company remains secretive about how it collects its information. Initially, it tracked users who had installed its toolbar, but now it relies on a "global traffic panel" composed of individuals using a specific browser extension and websites that opt into monitoring by installing an Alexa script. This raises questions about how representative the data actually is. Smaller websites don't receive the same level of detailed analysis as larger ones, meaning Alexa might not be as valuable for sites with lower traffic volumes.

3: Clicky

When discussions turn to "advanced analytics tools," Clicky always makes an appearance. Positioned at the lower end of the pricing spectrum (with a basic free version and a paid version starting at $9.99 per month for up to 30,000 monthly page views), Clicky provides excellent value for the money. It offers the same basic features as other analytics tools, such as tracking unique visitors and analyzing traffic patterns. However, Clicky stands out with its real-time analytics and "heatmaps," which reveal where users focus their attention and click the most on your site.

Clicky users appreciate its user-friendly interface and the ability to view analytics without needing to visit the Clicky website. The program includes an on-site widget that allows you to gather insights about your current visitors and their referring sources, whether for a specific page or for your entire site.

Clicky is frequently compared to Google Analytics. While Google Analytics is a free service, many users prefer Clicky, claiming it offers a more straightforward user experience with fewer complex features, making it easier to learn and use.

2: Facebook Insights

Facebook is a top choice for many online businesses. Some companies even rely solely on their Facebook pages instead of having a traditional website. If you’re seeing a significant amount of traffic and engagement from Facebook, using Facebook Insights is highly beneficial—it’s the only tool that provides in-depth data about your Facebook audience.

Getting started with Facebook Insights is incredibly simple. Once your page reaches 30 likes, it automatically starts generating reports. The basic data it provides includes your total reach (how many people have interacted with your page over the past week). It also shows the total engagement (the number of people who’ve clicked, liked, commented, or shared a post). You can even see when your fans are most active, so you can time your posts for maximum visibility. Overall, Facebook Insights is a powerful tool that requires no investment and minimal effort from you.

1: YouTube Analytics

If YouTube videos contribute to your site's traffic, or if your business revolves around a YouTube channel, YouTube Analytics is an essential tool. Just like a website, a YouTube channel can be optimized with data from YouTube Analytics, all for free.

YouTube Analytics offers a wealth of information within just a few pages. It provides detailed demographic insights about your audience and subscribers, as well as traffic sources, average view duration, and social media engagement. You’ll also find out how engaged your audience is: Do they watch your videos in full, and if not, where do they tend to drop off? After reviewing the data, you’ll have everything you need to start optimizing your channel, growing your audience, and monetizing your content. Whether you decide to adjust your content to your audience, create more engaging videos, redesign your channel, or all of the above, YouTube Analytics will guide you along the way.