Your 'Best visitor tracking software' recommendations

I have Urchin stats on a couple of sites and although the search term reporting seems flawed it shows some VERY useful information on visitor travel trends (IE Index > SAMPLES > Purchse page > exit...., or Index > contact form > confirm page > exit) but it only shows the most popular trends, and then only 3-4 page combos max.

It is great for identifying pages that are less friendly / less sticky, and pages that are deal breakers.

Is there any tracking software that shows comprehensive information like this..? like full visitor paths, or at least more than 3 linked page trends..? It would be GREAT to watch the trends and try changes to direct visitors better.

Just the Urchin stats have proven SO valuable for a few sites.

Your recommendations of something better would be very appreciated.

 

Or perhaps you can recommend another catagory to move my post to that would be more appropriate..?

 

well, Urchin is really good. If you want more, you are probably going to have to step up to the plate and pay some $$.

 

I pay $65/mo to track 60,000 page views with hitslink.com. Tables that show search term by search engine for each visitor and search term by entry page by search engine make it especially helpful in understanding where traffic comes from on new sites. The price is based on page views so yours might be cheaper. I went to their premium service to get the search term by search engine feature.

 

Thanks guys. The responces are excellent, but since this is an SEO forum they answer only the SEO aspect of visitor traffic - I am more concerned (at least in regards to this question) about tracking conversion trends of visitors once they arrive to a site. (hitslink sounds like an excellent package for seo though - I'll check it out)

I am interested for my own site for the research possibilities, but the real use would be for clients shopping sites where it would be invaluable to be able to track a vistors path to a successful sale, or premature exiting - identifying a page that may have confusing navigation, or un-HUMAN-optimized copy that .

I know this is a SEO forum - so I know that is the expertise of most of the users, but I'm looking for something more along the lines of marketing research....

again excellent help - chachi - what kind of money..? what kind of features..? Have something specific in mind..?

 

I'd like a good solution for this too.

I've used ClickTracks and KeywordMax but I want something more accurate.

I haven't heard of anyone that is really capturing this info. with 100% accuracy (using a stats package that is "store bought").

 

If one has big money www.websidestory.com can sell you a package to do as many different websites as you wish and can give you every piece of data you need no matter what.

 

Does anyone have experience w/ websidestory?

I saw a company using a few years ago and the html code on each page was ridiculous!

 

That is mostly for big business Rob, if your site is doing less than 5 Million a year it may not be ready for that sort of technology.

If one is running a e-commerce site a good ASP like www.storesense.com can provide all the data you need within the e-store itself.

 

What if we're at $4.99M?

NO, I know it's expensive but I would like to know people's experiences w/ it.

 

Great stuff guys - I'm taking notes - Let me add this.

I'd like economical solution recommendations for "penny pinching Average Joes" (ME)

and "we have a budget, lets spendit Mega Clients" (Iomega.com)

 

I don't need it myself, but the hitstlink premium version has a lot of things that can be set up to track marketing campaigns in detail.

I understand the need to be frugal, but more and more I am finding that when it comes to tools, there is a reason expensive software sells. I messed around with three or four HTML editors before I got Dreamweaver, I tried several photo editing tools before I got Photoshop, I used several stats packages before I found hitslink. In all those cases it is clear that for me, the money spent before going for the top of the line, was wasted. Your mileage may vary.

 

A penny pincher will not be able to track every little detail nor would you want to without analysis software.

 

Valid points all. Any idea what the HBX solutions(WebSideStory) will run..? Is that a custom build, or installable software - appears to be a managed account of some sort..

 

They sell packages, you will have to contact them, each package gives the ability to watch so many pages across many different websites if you wish.

 

awesome - I have an "Information request" form in to them now - thanks for all the input guys.

 

I just use awstats.

 

callme1.com is the software that we use. It recently started up and is fairly cheap. We get about 10,000 visitors a month to our website & it handles the customer support calls, along with real time visitor tracking. May be worth a try for your site.