Don’t have web analytics software? Unhappy with your current software? (Don’t think you need an analytics package?) Work with us to define your requirements and budget, and let us create a short list of packages that will work for you. Then, we’ll work together to do a free software test (usually available from most vendors) of the package that you like the best.

Some of the things you should consider when choosing analytics software include:

•	How financially stable is the company that sells the web analytics software? If they go out of business, will you have rights to the code, or will you be up the creek? And even if you have rights to the code, do you really want to be in that business? Do they offer a free test drive?
•	How much do you want to spend? Web analytics software seems to gather into four categories: free, super-cheap, low 4-digits and 5-digits. Paradoxically, the 5-digit variety is usually an annual recurring cost and many of the others look more like a purchase.
•	Do you want something that will read the records on your server (server log software) or do you want to put a little piece of code on every page (client-side software)? In the beginning, there were server side analytics, because they could read the server logs and make all the recordings of the server logs into something intelligible. However, when the web applications (ASPs) got into the market and couldn't get hold of the logs, they created "client-side analytics", accessing data with a little piece of JavaScript code on each of the web pages. Neither of these technologies is perfect. Furthermore, server-side software is more of a purchase and client side usually looks more like a rental.
•	What do you want to measure? Are you more interested in measuring, say, your search engine marketing, or doing clickstream analysis -- evaluating where customers go after they leave Page A? Do you need to see the clicks on the webpage itself? Are you interested in measuring keywords over multiple visits?
•	What’s more important: ease of use or depth of product? After all, the fanciest web analytics software won’t help you if it sits unused, or if you aren’t going to hire someone to figure out how to pull your key metrics from it and increase your conversion rate.

Don’t think you need a web analytics software package? Well, maybe you don’t. If your site is primarily a credibility check – customers want to know that you’re “for real” before they purchase offline – you can probably get away without a package. But as soon as you are relying on your site to generate leads or advertising dollars, create sales, or reduce your customer service costs, you need web analytics. This is the world’s most measurable medium, so why would you ignore what your customers are doing online?

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