My web analytics picks

Half the battle of creating a successful Internet venture is finding the right domain name, setting the site up, and building traffic. The other half is analyzing this traffic. Understanding who your visitors are, what they’re looking for, and how they ended up at your site is critical. Thankfully, there are a number of tools that will give you this data for free. Here are my top picks.

1. Google Analytics
Analytics is the de facto industry standard for statistics tracking. It displays data in any web browser with its fantastic interface. It can also be integrated with Google AdWords and track user actions, such as a visitor adding an item to their shopping cart or arriving at a checkout page. Best of all, it supports up to 50 sites. The only drawback is it usually takes several hours for new data to be displayed.

2. Woopra
A newcomer to the analytics industry, Woopra is still in beta. It’s different from its competitors in that it displays data using a desktop client. It’s very trendy-looking, with lots of neat graphs and icons. It contains plug-ins for CMS’s and blogging platforms like WordPress, making setup a cinch. What I like most about it, however, is that it updates data in real-time. There is even a “Live Visitors” page that shows you who is on your site at that very moment, what they are looking at, and how they got there.

3. Clicky
Clicky is a popular alternative to Google Analytics. It displays data in much the same manner, but does so in real-time and is in my opinion easier to use. Unfortunately, a monthly fee must be paid to get the best features. A free version is available that is still very good, but it only provides tracking for one domain with less than 3,000 pageviews per day.

Photo | Flickr