(See also, The complete list: 25 steps for building a Micro-ISV)

Online businesses have amazing capabilities when it comes to understanding their customers. With good web analytic software we can know where every potential customer has come from, what they did while on our site, and where they ended up.

To gather this same kind of information, Offline businesses are stuck doing expensive surveys and employing demographics companies. All they end up with is a vague shadow of a reflection of a grain of the truth.

But even still, offline business are willing to pay exorbitant sums for this kind of information. Why do they blow all that dough? Because everything in business revolves around knowing your customer.

And lucky for us, the best things in web analytics are free.

If you want -- the decision of which web analytics provider to use can be an incredibly complex experience. You can purchase a 275 page book from CMS Watch!

Or you can use:

"Leon's 100% guaranteed, absolutely idiot-proof one-step guide to choosing the right web analytics provider"

Here it is...

CHOOSE GOOGLE

Google Analytics (wikipedia entry) is the monster in this field. It's very easy to use, a cinch to install and chock full of information.

We use it at TimeSnapper. My business partner Atli set it up, so i can't really talk about the specifics. There's plenty written about it elsewhere, including some great info about Google Analytics from LifeHacker

But here's quick coverage, on one of the basic web-analysis issues that is particular to people who distribute binaries, such as Micro-ISV's.

Q: How do you use page-tracking software to track downloads, rather than page hits?

For example, when someone downloads your software, they might be downloading a zip file or an msi file. That's not a web page... how can web analytics software keep tabs on that?

I've got two answers to this one. Firstly, you can configure google analytics to record info about links being clicked (that lead to these files) as if they were files in their own right. See info about urchin tracker for help.

The other techniques is that your web server will have tracked every request for such files -- so you can turn logging on with your web server and mine the logs. There's a lot of free software that can make this easy for you.

Some of the packages for doing this (and this is 'seriously old-skool stuff' that your web 2.0 script kiddies can't remember as they weren't born when these things hit their hey dey) include Awstats, webtrends and analog.

What's the end game?

Contrary to common opinion, web analytics are not an end in themselves. It's not just about the pretty dashboards. All of that information is gathered for a reason -- feedback control.

Once you're gathering detailed feedback -- you can begin to gauge the effectiveness of all of the marketing activities that you engage in. And in software, and on the internet -- EVERYTHING is marketing. In fact, marketing is so central to everything you do online, that you don't even need to think of it as marketing. It's just 'being'.

So you re-arrange the layout of your landing page. Was it a good thing or a bad thing? That's what analytics can tell you! You changed the download image, changed your template, re-worded your slogan, put flyers in your local nudist colonies newspaper... did it have any effect? Should you do more of that or less? Analytics! That's where the answers is!!

Well-Regarded Alternatives

I have no experience with these three alternatives -- but if there's a feature you need and Google Analytics doesn't offer it, then check out these three little fellas, because they're recommended by various contributors at the joelonsoftware business of software forum

Increase Your Arsenal!

For the serious infonaut, there's other tools you can use as well.

We've set up Google Alerts to give us a daily email about anyone mentioning TimeSnapper or any other topics of interest to us.

Services like Technorati are also useful for finding out who's mentioning your product, or that of a competitors, or any topic you are tracking.

Where to from here?

I co-implemented these 25 steps a year ago now (with TimeSnapper), and first started to write about them nine months ago.

There's been a long break between writing steps number 4 and 5. But don't assume that i've stopped writing them, nor believe that I've promised to complete them.

If there's a particular step that you're waiting for, or if you need particular support or advice about your Micro-ISV, don't hesitate to email me (leonbambrick at gmail dot com). Other people sure do, and I love to help out where I can.

Also of course, I recommend the joel on software 'business of software' forum as a great place to ask any questions you have. The people there are always helpful, if sometimes a little grouchy ;-)

If you're looking for a book on the topic, I know of two excellent books: The Business of Software, by Eric Sink and MICRO-ISV from Vision to Reality by Bob Walsh. I haven't read Bob's book -- but my business partner Atli sure has. I know this because I get this steady stream of suggestions from him, all of which are dynamite stuff.

Ah good to see you working on these articles again, i found alot of synergy with the earlier articles and my software development or should i say product development, so was looking forward to hearing your battles with the market place.

Cheers

James

I'm going to disagree with you on this one. Google Analytics is OK, but comparing it versus my logs I see a lot of holes in the data.

Back in Step 2 - choosing hosting, I would put an integrated analytics package high on the list of requirements. With a gazillion hosting plans out there, you might as well get one that offers something better than the basic AWStats package.

There are some things that javascript based analytics tools can't provide that web log based ones do, such as tracking downloads from 3rd party sites (e.g., software directories). So GA is nice for some things, but it's an incomplete solution.

One other thing. If I had to do it all over again, I would have made all my pages dynamic to start off with. That way if you want to add custom tracking down the line, you can do so without having to change all the url's on your site.

@ubercoder -- thanks for kicking me back into action on this list!

@nick -- tell me more about these 'integrated analytics packages' that hosts can provide. are there any names of such packages that you like? any hosts that provide them? i take it these things work by analysing server logs? or server-side code in your pages.

also -- i take your point about using a dynamic file extension, even if your content starts off static. as TimBL says, "cool urls don't change".

@Des -- i know nothing of this Gatineau -- until now that is. also, i'll manually turn your links into real links in just a moment.

@JB -- cheers, take care of the office will ya.

lb

I go through Crystal Tech and they have SmarterStats, which isn't half bad. There's also a desktop product called Webstorm Logging that will analyze the logs that you download.

Wikipedia has a pretty good rundown of the pros and cons of web logs versus tagging (e.g. Google Analytics):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_analytics

The main beef I have with Google's sytem is the tracking I've had for conversions. I have a post-purchase confirmation page on my site that ~60% of buyers will actually click through to after the sale. Of those 60%, maybe 1/3 are actually tracked by Google Analytics. That makes it really difficult to track AdWords conversions.

AdWords also has a tagged based tracking system. Some people report getting better results with it, but I didn't see much difference.

Overall, if you've got nothing better available, then Google Analytics is still a good solution. But it's just nice to have a web logs system as well to cross-check the numbers.

Google analytics is good for finding out where you traffic comes from etc. However I feel it is an incomplete picture without two things -

A) A webmaster tools account on your google sign in (free)

B At least one other tracking service (your domain host generally supplies one) to make sure the data is on the same scale as your other data.

These two things will give you a more complete picture of how google sees your website as well as how you hosting provider sees your website. This may help you track errors in web design (including broken links) and minimize catastrophe in the event that Google Analytics is slow or crashes and you desperately need this data.

lb,

I'm glad you back on this list and happy I helped a bit.

This is great stuff!

Ubercoder

Great list, Just half way down it at the moment and will post back my response. Keep up the good work.