Software Tools to Analyze Your Intranet Site, Web site and Competitors' Web sites

Ian Smith

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Keeping track of competitors' progress on and offline can be a time-consuming task. Although there are a number of tools to keep you informed on the successes and failures of key players in your industry, the tools cannot deliver various pieces of data that may influence major strategic planning decisions.

Online success can be measured in dollars and cents and a well-designed Web site, in terms of content and easy navigation, can lead a first-time visitor back to a site. In order to know what makes a Web site "a boom or a bust," you must gather enough information on the 'bare-bone' structure of the Internet presence of the company you are attempting to investigate.

In this month's toolkit, we will take a look at five tools that can assist you in analyzing Web sites, in particular your Web site and competitors' Web sites. These tools will give you an idea of how your competitors are building their Web sites to increase traffic— which will lead to higher revenues. We recommend that you test out the majority of the following tools to see which software best fit your needs.

Alexa
Atomiclog
Magic Stats
NetTracker
Surf Stats

Ratings Legend

A	Great
A-	Very Good
B+	Good
B	Fair
B-	Adequate

Alexa

The Alexa Web site information tool is a very efficient piece of software to utilize. As the Alexa toolbar sits along with your Web navigation toolbar, Alexa supplies you with various pieces of information about the Web site you plan to visit. Once you have logged onto a particular Web site, Alexa gives you access to:

Where the Web site originates from (city, country)
Contact information
Date the Web site was placed online

As you venture through Alexa, you will receive an up-to-date status report on the content of the site. Along with reviews from previous visitors, you will obtain information on:

Related links: Where hyperlinks are situated elsewhere on the Web
Traffic: Number of hits to the site's index page. Ranks the top 100,000 Web sites
Links In: Number of different Web pages that link to this particular Web site
Speed: Measures how fast the Web site loads?
Average User Rating
Web site Reviews

Did we like Alexa? Along with the elements of information mentioned above, we found Alexa to be flexible when it came to surfing the Web. With a single click, the tool allowed us to search for a product or a reference site using the popular Web searching tools.

Competia Online Magazine Rating: A

To download a copy of Alexa, please visit http://www.alexa.com.

Atomiclog

The Atomiclog software provides you with the necessary tools to take an in-depth look at your Web site's performance. Although similar products on the market produce a report at a fixed time during the day, users of Atomiclog can receive real-time data as they log on to their servers. The ability to obtain such information at certain points of the day can play a key role in online marketing planning. (i.e., did your banner placement between the hours of 9 am and noon create traffic?)

Specifically, Atomiclog furnishes users with the ability to gather information regarding:

Referrals - Where is your traffic coming from? Search engine or other sites?
Top Downloaded Files - What is the most popular software? Which presentation is requested the most?
Top visiting domains and countries - In which countries are your visitors logging on from?
Pages Views - How many pages a particular individual is viewing?

Did we like Atomiclog? After testing out this tool, we were impressed with the presentation of the relevant data. Key statistics are presented in different windows to provide a focused look at the necessary information for future planning decisions.

Competia Online Magazine Rating: B+

To download a copy of Atomiclog please visit http://www.atomiclog.com/download.html

Magic Stats

Users of the Magic Stats analysis tool can have access to detailed information regarding their respective Web sites. From the number of hits to the index page to number of megabytes of bandwidths, Magic Stats breaks down data, which can be used for marketing purposes. Precisely, users can clearly see:

Traffic by hour: Average accesses, maximum accesses, and minimum accesses
Most-viewed Web pages: Flow of traffic from the index page to other pages linked to it.
Most common hosts: Who is visiting your site and where are they going? (Indicated by ISP number)
Most frequent referrers: Traffic-creating links on the Web.

Did we like Magic Stats? When we received our first report from Magic Stats, we liked the fact that we were given daily projections regarding our visitors and pages that are being seen.

Competia Online Magazine Rating: B-

To download a copy of MagicStats please visit http://www.nondot.org/MagicStats/

NetTracker

Targeted at Webmasters and eCommerce managers, NetTrack can be used to analyze traffic and e-business activities on your commercial Web site. Reports generated by NetTrack supplies the necessary information to evaluate the performance of Web sites built to convince individuals to buy online. To have the ability and information to make decisions regarding traffic, users can extract the following from NetTrack's reports:

Analysis of dynamically generated content
Cookie translation - Identify visitors by name, e-mail, phone, etc.
Content grouping and popularity analysis - Group visitors by the content they view on a site
Visitor segmentation - Create profiles and categorize actions performed
Repeat, new and unique visitor analysis: Measure site "stickiness" (How long a visitor remains on the site)

A distinctive advantage that NetTrack has over the other tools mentioned in this article is that it can feed users information that is related to the e-commerce component of the Web site. NetTrack provides the following pieces of analysis:

Shopping Cart / Purchase - Examines revenue from your Web site
ROI / Revenue - Which banner ads, links, e-mail promotions and search engines are referring the customers to the site
Advanced Visitor Segmentation - Segments visitors by their interests (products and pages viewed) for targeted sales and marketing campaigns
Advanced Individual Visitor Clickstream - Compares the paths of visitors who purchase online, purchase offline or do not purchase at all
Advanced Repeat Visitor - Measure your site's "stickiness," compares buying behavior of new visitors versus repeat visitors

With the sources of analysis stated above, users can make the necessary changes to their marketing plans to improve their e-commerce strategies in the future.

Did we like NetTracker? Although expensive, NetTracker is ideal for large companies which wish to keep a watchful eye on their performance online. Some of the features that we think may be beneficial to individuals who are considering purchasing a similar tool are:

Up-to-the-minute reporting of data needed to make informed decisions
Ability to produce customizable reports
Ability to e-mailed reports to colleagues
Web data storage / warehousing capabilities

Competia Online Magazine Rating : B+

To obtain a trial copy NetTracker for Web sites and e-businesss analysis, please contact Sane Solutions at support@sane.com.

Surf Stats

The SurfStats Log Analyzer provides users two packages to monitor Web site activities. For newcomers to Web site analysis, SurfStats makes available a good standard edition which allows users to obtain the following tools and pieces of information:

Tools

A setup wizard is included to lead clients through the program setup
Easy report selection from the expandable and collapsible table of contents
The ability to generate reports in English, French, German, Italian, Portuguese and Spanish
Tips and links to resources are available online to help improve a user's Web Site

Information that can be obtained:

Views per Visit
Length of Visit
Organizations summary (breakdown by organization type (.com, .net, .org, .gov, .edu & .mil)

For advanced users and individuals who wish to gain in-depth analysis of a relative large Web site, SurfStats furnishes a Professional Edition of the software. Some of the tools that can be utilized in this version of the product are: (These tools are not exclusive to this version.)

MS and Netscape proxy file support, Lotus Domino
Fast and interactive reporting mode
Generated reports can be set to be viewed, e-mailed, filed in specific directories or up- and downloaded with the FTP client
Reports are generated in html format, which can be read by most browsers and can be imported into MS Word

The Professional Edition reports are very detailed in content and structure by making use of various graphs to present data. Here are a few queries which you can receive replies for:

Which are the most downloaded files?
Which sites have been bookmarked on our site?
What are the top entry pages / files?
Which spiders have visited the site?

Did we like SurfStat? Both versions of this product were relatively easy to use. We were impressed with the number of query options that was made available to retrieve brief reports regarding the Web site that we tested the product on.

Competia Online Magazine Review: B+

To download a trial copy of this tool, visit the SurfStat Web site.

Did we miss a tool ? Contact us and let us know about it.

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More Intranet Corner

Intranet Corner: Why an Intranet Must Constantly be Updated - And Steps to Take to Make Sure It Is: The single most important thing to realize about an intranet is that it is a growing entity. If you wipe your brow in relief after rolling out your intranet and think that that was all there was to it, you are going to be in for a surprise.

Software Tools to Analyze Your Intranet Site, Web site and Competitors' Web sites

Ratings Legend

Alexa

Atomiclog

Magic Stats

NetTracker

Surf Stats

Whitepapers and eBooks

Webcasts

Downloads and eKits

Tutorials and Demos