Companies and websites all over the world are utilizing web analytics for their marketing efforts. Using analytics is a way to measure how your marketing is working out and how your website is performing.

There are several great tools you can start using to watch the progress of your website traffic. Some tools will show you the basics, such as daily, weekly or monthly traffic stats. Other resources that can show you how visitors are finding your website; whether it be from SEO or Social Media, etc.

Analytics are incredibly useful for watching your traffic grow and gauging the performance of new launches. Take a look at some of the analytics tools we recommend, one of the following should fit your needs perfectly. If not, there are a multitude of options available to you.

Analytics Tools

Google Analytics

Google Analytics is the gold standard of analytics tools. The free version actually has an incredible amount of functionality. Google’s tool can be integrated into just about any kind of website out there and is very intuitive to use and read results.

Unless you are running a major enterprise, the free version is probably all you’ll need. You’ll have access to a variety of data collection options for your websites, apps and even devices. Read your results on your computer web browser, through the mobile app or email. You get advanced reporting as well. See what users are doing on your website, how long they’re staying and what they’re clicking on.

You can also use Google Analytics to track your PPC campaigns. See which ads are getting clicks and which aren’t performing so well.

All of these tools help you see whats working on your website (and marketing efforts) and what isn’t. You also get valuable insight into how your site is working and what users and visitors are drawn to.

Jetpack for WordPress

First, let’s distinguish the two branches of WordPress; WordPress.com and WordPress.org. WordPress.org is home to WordPress as an application; this is where you would get your install files to build a WordPress based site on your own server and domain name. WordPress.com is setup to be more of a blogging platform. On WordPress.com the blog you setup is integrated with some social media type functions. When you do your own installation away from WordPress.com, you lose some visibility. The first part of Jetpack is to get you this visibility even with your own installation.

Jetpack also provides some excellent, albeit rudimentary, analytics. If you’re just starting out and using WordPress, Jetpack is a great way to go. You’ll be able to see how many people are visiting your site, where they’re coming from, how much time they’re spending on your site and what they’re doing on your pages. This is a great place to start your analytics and can be a big help when fine tuning your efforts.