Last month, we introduced you to a few baseline concepts of web site analytics and explained some of the terminology used to measure web site traffic. This month, we present two really easy-to-understand overviews on services that you can use to analyze your web site traffic and identify ways in which you can optimize your Return on Investment (ROI).

HitBox Professional from Visual Science At Live2Support, we continuously evaluate web analytics and visitor site analysis systems of both the subscription and downloadable variety. We must admit that it is a real jungle out there with thousands of free and paid products available to assess your visitor traffic. Since Live2Support's chat software has a large number of in-built traffic analysis tools, we are able to provide reliable comparisons against a functional benchmark. The web statistics service from Visual Sciences called HitBox Professional is among the more popular solutions being used today. We will tell you about its many features in a moment but first we need to tell you that it is not free. Monthly subscriptions to HitBox Professional start at $26.67 a month and goes up from there depending on which plan you choose. But before you fish out your credit card, we ask that you first sign up for a fully functional demo version of the service. It is a good idea to first use the demo version of the subscription service just to make sure this is what you are looking for. Visual Science is strong on customer support and so if you are one of those users who will need help during the initial stages of implementation, we recommend that you consider HitBox Professional seriously. HitBoxProfessional and its Features HitBox Professional provides real-time web site analysis. This means that you can watch visitor activity as it takes place on your web site. HitBox Professional is equipped to show you where your site visitors are coming from a search engine results page, web site, directly from a web browser etc. which web pages on your web site they are looking at, and which navigational paths they take through your web site. The program also tracks customer orders, customer behavior and revenue, and accurately identifies the optimal sources of customer acquisition. HitBox Professional enables you to pinpoint which promotion or incentive program on your web site is generating maximum heat. The end result? Web analytics programs like HitBox Professional can help you devise powerful strategies to increase visitor conversion rates, and in the final analysis, improve the quality of customer service. Downside Many users and web masters consider HitBox Professional to be good value for money. Its pricing structure, however, can be misleading. Subscription plans are based on monthly page views and if your page views happen to be higher than the allowed number in your plan and exceed the limit, it costs extra. The extent to which HitBox Professional is page view sensitive is not determined by you but by external factors such as visitor traffic and Hatbox's interpretation of this data. Although HitBox Professional touts many advanced-level report generation features such as the ability to send reports to your inbox and the ability to export traffic data to Excel spread sheets, we have to make sure that you aren't biting off more than you can chew. To eliminate the possibility of feature overkill, you might want to consider first signing up for a trial demo version before you subscribe to the service on a regular basis. Google analytics Google Analytics is a service offered by Google and is designed to generate comprehensive site visitor traffic data and statistics about the visitors to your web site. Like most other Google services, Google Analytics is free and is extremely easy to install and use. Although the intended purpose of Google Analytics is to help web site owners who participate in Google's PPC programs like AdWords and AdSense with traffic analysis, anyone can use Google Analytics. It provides data on most critical web site traffic issues such as where your site visitors are arriving from, how long they are staying on your site and their geographical origin. If you have used Google Analytics before and feel like commending Google for its elementary and yet highly effective approach to traffic analysis, you might want to hold off. This tool was originally developed by Urchin Software Corporation and was subsequently acquired by Google in April 2005 like You Tube, Jaiku, Blogger, Adaptive Path's Measure Maps and Feedburner. If you happen to be using any type of PPC to increase site traffic and your conversion ratio, Google Analytics is a safe and sure bet for you. This is because its reporting functions are known to be accurate and mostly tally with similar data from other traffic analysis solutions. Google Analytics allows you to choose from eighty distinct reporting features all of which update in one hour or less. You are allowed to monitor up to fifty web sites although many web masters are able to sneak in a few extra URLs while Google looks the other way. Downside With annual revenues of $10.6 billion and a worldwide full-time employee base of 15,916, it is hard to expect Google to be less than perfect. However, there are programs which can prevent Google Analytics from compiling traffic statistics through overtly vigilant gate keeping. Pop-up blockers like Adblock and computer privacy services like Tor do a great job of keeping Google at bay. Conclusion If your web site has either a customer or a content orientation, it makes perfect sense to sign up for a traffic analysis service. From a technical perspective too, this is not a complex task. All you have to do is to paste and embed Java script on to your web pages, upload your updated web pages and activate the site. Just as an aside, we would like you to know that Live2Support too comes with extremely powerful web analytics attributes. All the important features offered by HitBox Professional and Google Analytics are available in Live2Support which gives you the added advantage of getting potent live chat features and web analytics in a single functionally integrated environment. And we provide full-fledged customer support too!

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