21.7: Tools of the trade

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The first thing you need is a web analytics tool for gathering data. Some are free and some need to be paid for. You will need to determine which package best serves your needs. Bear in mind that if you switch vendors, you may lose historical data. Below are some leading providers:

Google Analytics – www.google.com/analytics
AWStats – awstats.sourceforge.io
Webalizer – www.webalizer.org
Hotjar – www.hotjar.com
GoSquared – www.gosquared.com
Kissmetrics – www.kissmetrics.com
Clicky – clicky.com

When it comes to running split tests, if you don’t have the technical capacity to run these in-house, there are some third-party services that can host them for you.

Google Optimize, which you would have learnt about in the Conversion optimisation chapter is Google’s platform for running tests and assessing your website’s performance.

A test the significance of basic split tests, a split-test calculator is available at: www.usereffect.com/split-test-calculator. When you use cookie-based tracking, you need to add code tags to your web pages and these need to be maintained, updated and changed occasionally. Google Tag Manager (www.google.com/ tagmanager) makes it easy to add and work with these tags without requiring any coding knowledge. Other professional tag management tools include TagMan (www. tagman.com), Ensighten (www.ensighten.com) and Tealium (www.tealium.com).