How To Choose The Right Analytics Business Tools

1) Understand your needs 2) Understand your limitations 3) Do the research 4) Validate the tool first 5) Check reviews and testimonials 6) Ask for professional assistance There are so many analytics tools to analyse a business website that it becomes difficult to choose the right one for your business. Website analytics is not a one-size-fits-all proposition. Each business has unique analytics needs and what works for one business might not work for another one. In this article, we give you a six-step procedure to find your own effective website analytics tool that will work for your business. Although analytics can be used on any aspect of a business, we’re going to focus on website analytics here. This is the type of traffic analysis analytics which lets you improve your business’s website in order to gain more traffic and, more importantly, conversions. 1) Understand your needs What do you need to track and monitor? It might not necessarily be what your competitors are tracking. The crucial thing to establish is what you want the tool to deliver for you. Is the tool supposed to furnish: Business intelligence? Marketing analytics? Extensive reporting? Custom reporting? Raw data? Data visualisation? Not all tracking tools are made the same, and some are more top-heavy in certain categories than others. Look at what features you need and then find a tool that specialises in those needs. Too many people just jump to Google Analytics as their business website’s analytics solution. This is folly because there are things which other analytics providers such as HotJar and CrazyEgg do very well which Google Analytics doesn’t, and vice versa. 2) Understand your limitations You need to understand your limitations. If you’re not a technical person, then ease-of-use is essential. It’s all great and dandy to have tons of analytics reports which only look like a bunch of jargon on charts if you can’t read them. Either you’re going to know (or learn) how to read these tools, or you’re going to pay someone to simplify them for you. That all depends on your limitations, whether those limitations are in the realm of: Technical skills. Human resources at your disposal. 3) Do the research Do your own research. Make a short-list of analytics tools that you think might have the features you need in your business. Look through that list and study up on each tool’s offerings in relation to your needs and limitations. There’s no point in signing up for a tool that is made for scientists when your last encounter with science was in high school where you got an F on your final exam paper. Well, if an analytics tool is too complex and you’re not that way inclined, then it’s useless to you. The critical thing is to do your own research. Sure, look at lists that discuss various analytics offerings. But also compile your own list. Read up on each tool yourself so you know what it can do. 4) Validate the tool first If the tool is not free, sign up for a trial version first. Use it for a while and see if you are able to work with it. You need to test two things: Does the tool itself provide what you need? Is the tool easy to learn so that you don’t lose valuable time getting your wits around it? 5) Check reviews and testimonials Reviews can be faked (quite easily, believe it or not) so proceed with caution here. Stick to review sites with a reputation for aggressive action against fake reviews such as TrustPilot or Google Reviews. Look at the testimonials for that product and see what people say about it. 6) Ask for professional assistance You either have time or you have money. Few have an abundance of both. For some people, their money is cheaper than their time. If you are not technically inclined, then analytics tools can be pretty overwhelming, and asking for assistance becomes crucial. The key with asking for expert help on the subject of website analytics is to get value for money, not necessarily the cheapest service. Agencies are bound to charge higher fees. Is what they’re offering worth the larger financial burden? Will their turnaround time be fast enough when dealing with you as a result of their other commitments? Will asking for any small modification take several weeks to get done? Freelancers are another option. Be sure to stick with freelancers who have made a point of creating a business as opposed to those who just look for “gigs”. Freelancers who are creating a business are far more likely to deliver a professional service that turns you into a regular client than “gig” freelancers. We also offer an Analytics Service as part of our offering, and we’d be more than happy to assist you in implementing and understanding any data analytics solution that your business wants to use on its website. About author Julia Richards Our head of content, Julia has spent the past 20 years assisting entrepreneurs with all aspects of business launch and growth strategies in various industries around the globe.

What are the fundamentals of SEO? Why do you need SEO when launching your new website? How do you start optimising your site? What do SEO services cost? No matter what new marketing platform or social media platform appears on the scene, nothing will ever take away the enshrined position of search engines when it comes to getting found on the internet. Yes, people recommend links on social media; yes, advertising can lead to direct visits. But those two items always eventually funnel back to the place people go to in order to find content: Search Engines. Indeed, some years ago, Google’s head of search confirmed that Social Links are indeed used as a search engine ranking factor. So, you see? At the end of the day, it still comes down to search engines. But how do you get found on search engines? Will SEO actually help your new business? What are the fundamentals of SEO? SEO stands for Search Engine Optimisation. It encompasses all the myriad tasks which must be performed in order to have a website that ranks highly on the search engines for specific keywords and phrases. The term Search Engine Optimisation encompasses actions taken on the site itself (on-site SEO) as well as actions taken off the site (off-site SEO). On-site SEO includes things like: Having the correct titles for articles. Providing superbly written website content that is useful for visitors. Linking between pages so the search engines can understand your site’s structure. Making sure the website’s HTML is correctly formatted. Ensuring that the website’s images have accurate “tags” describing them. Ensuring the addresses of web pages make sense to users, and therefore also to search engines. And a plethora of other actions. “Off-site” SEO includes: Social media optimisation. Getting high-quality backlinks to your website (basically, other sites linking to yours). And so on. Why do you need SEO when launching your new website? SEO is a long-term strategy. One builds a reputation with Search Engines over time. It simply doesn’t happen overnight. Of course, the more dedicated effort you put into it, the faster that can occur. But it’s important to keep in mind that “slow and steady gets you there”, and to not feel frustrated if you’re not suddenly number one on Google for some or other highly competitive keyword. Because SEO is a slow-burn process, it is imperative to start it as soon as possible so that, when your company is ready to launch a new major product, it already has all that SEO juice it’s been working towards for the last several months. If you’ve done your job right, your product will start to appear when people search for similar products from your competitors. This is one of the beauties of SEO. Anyone can get in on the game and compete with the best of them. All it requires is some in-depth knowledge of SEO — and a lot of hard work. The added bonus is that all this traffic to your site costs you nothing, unlike paid advertising on the search engines. How do you start optimising your site? SEO is a massive subject. It takes years to master, but fortunately, it doesn’t tak e years to get started. Google itself has an excellent SEO Starter Guide to get you going with the basics. Another great resource is the MOZ SEO Beginner’s Guide. If you’re in a hurry and can’t read those guides just yet, then here’s a simple “back of the napkin” series of steps you can take right now to immediately improve your chances of ranking highly in the search engines: First, make a list of keywords and phrases that you want to be found for. You can do this off the top of your head (not very scientific, but better than nothing) or you can use one of the many keyword tools around to help you. We’ve written an extensive SEO guide which you can check out in order to get a list of some of our favourite keyword tools. You need to be using these keywords in your page titles, your website’s copy (blog posts as well as landing pages) and even in the descriptions of your images. It gets a little tricky because you definitely don’t want to be using the words in such a way that is unnatural. At the same time, you do need to use the words! Excellent SEO starts with figuring out a way to balance the two extremes. There you go: Simple “back of the napkin” SEO you can do right now! What do SEO services cost? For SEO to be done well, it should be done by someone with extensive experience. Unfortunately, that means spending either plenty of time learning SEO, or plenty of money paying an agency to do it for you. Yes, there are tools around which can help you (check out our SEO Guide for a list of them), but SEO is something that must be constantly monitored in order to be effective — so there is always the investment of time if you do it yourself. It is not uncommon for full-service agencies to charge upwards of several thousand pounds for their services. Sadly, we can tell you from experience that: There are no guarantees in SEO, so “cheaper” is sometimes better. A lot of time can be wasted with ineffective SEO that sounds good on paper but really has little value on a website’s ranking. Too many agencies offer these “services” to make it appear like they are doing more for you than they really are. Believe it or not, some agencies actually need to be chased up to work on your campaign. SEO is big business. If you’re a small- or medium-sized client, you might get left behind in the dust while they go and work for their larger clients. There’s a lot you can do on your own. Sure, if you want to get fancier, you might need to call in some help. But make sure that whoever you hire is determined to deliver on whatever KPIs they promise you. SEO for SEO’s sake is useless. The whole point of SEO is to bring more traffic to your website. And if the SEO company that you hired to do that isn’t cutting it, then sack them. About author Julia Richards Our head of content, Julia has spent the past 20 years assisting entrepreneurs with all aspects of business launch and growth strategies in various industries around the globe.