Free Apps, Tools, and Software News: Analytics

Web Analytics An Hour A Day - published by Sybex, an imprint of Wiley

Referrers? Sources? Bounce Rate? Unique Visits? Why should we know about these terms as site owners? In simple language for both beginners and advanced users, the author lays out how analytics can help you understand the needs of your site visitors so you can allocate your work based on a better understanding of your customers.

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Yahoo! Web Analytics: Tracking, Reporting, and Analyzing - published by Sybex, an imprint of Wiley

For those who use or are interested in using Yahoo!'s web-based analytics tool, this book is a step-by-step, but also a great intro for anyone who wants to learn more about how, as a site manager, web traffic data is collected, analyzed, and reported, so that you can use the data to assign costs bests to marketing campaigns by segment. Also looks at how your site visitors use search keywords to find your product to help you learn to best optimize your search engine terms.

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Audience, Relevance, and Search: Targeting Web Audiences with Relevant Content - by James Mathewson

Although this title relates more to online marketing and keywords, a good grasp of these tools will help increase awareness of your users and how your site is used to help you increase relevant content and site traffic. The title covers how to use analytical tools and dashboards to measure site effectiveness.

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Web Traffic Analysis (Analytics Tools)

What is analytics and how can it help improve my Web site? "Web analytics is the process of gathering and analyzing your web content's data in order to glean meaningful information about how your site is being used by your users," according to one definition posted to SixRevisions. In short, Web analytics can help you design your Web site to help your users find the information they need quickly and learn about your clients, customers, or other user base as you build and improve your business' online presence.

Clicky: Track up to 3,000 page views per day on one site. An on-site analytic widget tracks total site visits and tracks real-time/current users on each page at a given time. 

Google Analytics: The free version enables site owners to track page views, learn what browsers visitors use to access the site, get SEO reports, and offers a snippet of code that can be added to each page on the site the owner wishes to monitor.

Stat Counter: Can offer simple summary stats of total page views, unique, returning and first-time visits. Stat counter also offers a visible or invisible stat counter that can be added to pages in a site.

Woopra (beta): Stats updated at least once per day. The tool differentiates between repeat and first-time visitors to your site and offers details on site referrals. The free version allows subscribers to track usage in real time and run analytics reports.