I currently use a lot of different tools to build a picture of how our agency is doing, but I have not yet unified these into a simple set of metrics that tells me how we're doing.
Tools I use to rate my agency online include:
Site metrics
- Webtrends for site performance and detailed analysis (unique visitors, visits, page views, time on page)
- Hitwise for benchmarking and demographics (Ranking vs National Government sites/all sites, site demographics, Mosaic, search trends, upstream/downstream sites)
- Google analytics for reality checks (traffic trends, search trends, browser/resolution)
Search metrics
- FunnelBack site search engine reports (site searches, unsuccessful searches within the site, best bets)
- Hitwise (top terms, unsuccessful searches, other destinations)
- Google trends (search trends, top terms, site comparison, hot terms)
Customer metrics
- Technorati for blog posts (mentions, tone)
- Summarize for Twitter mentions (mentions, tone)
- Wikipedia entry status (accuracy and interest)
- Alexa (views)
- Manual forum checks (checking of mentions and tone across a selection of forums)
Media metrics
- Google alerts for media mentions including blogs
- Hitwise media alerts for commercial media mentions
zAt my agency, I've transferred all our sites into Google Analytics from a proprietary solution. It's hard to beat. We also analyse server logs for download's (PDF's) as Google can't manage that.
ReplyDeleteAdditionally, we do a little bit of search keyword analysis using Google Web Master tools, for complete and failed terms, and log file analysis, for individual words.
Alexa I don't really trust, and hitwise tracks only personal ISP connections not businesses, but is still useful.
The only other tool we found a use for is heatmap tracking of clicks.