While searching (what else?) for some fun (yes analytics can be fun) I found a great aritcle on web belonging to a company called StoneTemple Consulting ( I know a band called StoneTemple Pilots) under the title “10 Cool Things you can do with IndexTools“.
I did with my former co-worker spend some time looking at web analytic tools, Webtrends was to complicated, Omniture to expencive and Urchin to primitive and from our point of view we struck gold when we found IndexTools, we had three main criteria that the tool needed to fullfill so we would want to look at it.
1. Manageable pricing
2. “Marketing department” friendly
3. As close to 100% deep drillable data and trend reporting
That and being a tool in constant development was our main criteria, Indextools had it all and is even getting stronger, when we reviewed it it was at version 8.5 and now they are bringing out version 10 – release date is in Q3 2007.
The new improved will contain among other Lifetime visitor-level metrics, External data source framework, Interactive visualization and Custom metrics.
About Kristjan Mar
Kristjan Mar Hauksson is the founder and director of search and online communications at Nordic eMarketing. The company specializes in multilingual online communications, organic search engine optimization, and marketing through several verticals such as tourism, finance, government, and pharmaceuticals. It helps companies gain international visibility online and to use the Internet as a communication channel; it also provides consultation in web content management systems and analytics solutions. Hauksson is on the board of directors of SEMPO and founded the Iceland SEO/SEM forum. He has been involved in developing Internet solutions since 1996, and involved in search engine optimization and marketing since 1999. He is a publish author on the topic of Internet Marketing.
This looks good, great to see what it is that you monitor with these high end web analytic tools. Also see that there is good ariticle on Google Analytic and WebTrends. What is you take on Google versus Indextools or Webtrends for that matter? Or more General the diffirence between tools that you are paying for and tools that are free?
Just to ad to this: I belive there is a phrase out there that goes like this “There is no such thing as a free lunch” and the luunch being Google Analytics for example.
I found this on IndexTools Dennis Mortensen’s blog – http://visualrevenue.com/blog/2007/07/what-and-how-to-measure-media-and.html – A belive that all of what is listed there is not possible with GA and this PDF document from Web Analytics Demystified on “The Problems with free Analytics” URL: http://www.webanalyticsdemystified.com/sample/Web_Analytics_Demystified_RESEARCH_-_March_2007_-_Free_Versus_Licensed_Web_Analytics.pdf – Great Stuff