Online Metrics

Google Analytics Courses and Consulting

Analytics Tools I Recommend

Note: some of the links on this page are affiliate links. Link to affiliate disclosure.

During the process of developing several websites and helping companies growing their online businesses, I’ve come across many resources and tools that are a great help on your optimization journey.

Below is a list of tools that I have used and recommend. The list goes from directly related tools to Analytics and CRO to more broad, but very effective ones to add to your list as well.

You have the option to go through the entire list or directly navigate to the topic of your choice (click on a link below):

Google Analytics (Automation)

Google Analytics Sheets add-on – add-on that makes it easier to access, visualize, share and manipulate your Google Analytics data. Make sure you check out the metrics and dimensions overview and Core Reporting API reference guide first.

Supermetrics – extremely powerful set of tools for anyone who wants to automate their Analytics (online marketing) reporting. You can choose from different products:

  • Supermetrics Data Grabber (easy-to-use report automation tool for Google Analytics, AdWords, Facebook, Bing Ads, Twitter, YouTube & Google Webmaster Tools).
  • Supermetrics for Google Sheets (add-on that turns Google Sheets into a full-blown business reporting system for web analytics, social media and online marketing).
  • Supermetrics Uploader (imports advertising cost data from any source into Google Analytics).
  • Supermetrics Functions (most flexible way of getting your business metrics into Excel and Google Spreadsheet; for advanced Excel users).

Google Analytics (Campaign Tracking)

Google Analytics URL Builder (Chrome Plugin) – terrific plugin that makes it very easy to create campaign tracking URLs on the fly.

Google Analytics (Dashboards)

Dashboard Junkie – do you need some inspiration for setting up Google Analytics dashboards? This is the perfect place to start!

Google Analytics Solution Gallery – great overview of dashboards, custom reports and segments. You can share your most powerful ones or access the most popular ones from people like Avinash and Justin Cutroni. Just to name a few.

Google Analytics (Debugging)

Fiddler – free web debugging proxy for any browser, system or platform (advanced).

GA Debugger – retrieve campaign information (source, medium, and keywords), events, page views and ecommerce stats. Literally every dimension and metric is captured by this plugin.

Google Analytics Regular Expression Tester – I really love this one! You can go completely wild with regular expressions and sometimes you just want to test them. This is a perfect tool to use.

Google Analytics Tag Assistant – nice plugin that gives you a simple overview of which GA tags are firing on your site. Accompanied with some recommendations.

Real-Time Reports – extremely powerful reporting set in Google Analytics that allows you to quickly test and debug your Google Analytics implementation.

Best practice: set up a profile that only includes your IP address and you are ready to go!

Web Analytics Solution Profiler (WASP) – a powerful visualized overview of the tags that are being fired and the correlation between them.

Conversion Rate Optimization

AB Testguide – simple online tool that educates you on significance and power levels while performing A/B tests. Don’t rely on test tools alone.

They sometimes make you think you have a winner within a day.

Best practice: test at least for one full week and 150 conversions per variant are a minumum!

Optimizely – my favorite testing tool with built-in segmentation rules, a huge range of targeting options and multi-page experiments. And phone support you definitely can rely on.

Visual Website Optimizer (VWO) – a great option if you are just starting out. It offers valuable features for advanced users as well.

Tip: read this testing tool comparison article (Optimizely, Visual Website Optimizer and Content Experiments) by Rich Page.

Qualaroo – gather voice of customer insights and valuable input for your A/B tests. Easy to set up and run experiments.

Keyword Research

Long Tail Pro – I believe it is by far the best keyword research tool on the market. It makes is easy to find out how competitive your market is. They offer a few options:

  • Free 10-day Trial (just try it out!)
  • Long Tail Pro (Standard) – $ 97
  • Long Tail Pro (Platinum) – $ 97 + $ 17 / month

The standard version is good, but the platinum version is superb. It includes the Keyword Competitiveness metric (KC) which is extremely powerful. You can’t go wrong here if keyword research is crucial for your online business growth.

Microsoft Office

myOnlineTrainingHub – highly recommended if you want to take you Office skills to the next level. Their Excel dashboard course is phenomenal.

WordPress Plugins and Themes

Digg Digg – plugin that makes social sharing very easy.

Google Analytics by Yoast – great option if you don’t have the knowledge or time to implement Google Analytics on your WordPress website.

Google Tag Manager for WordPress – makes it easy to add the container tag to your website. Includes a few nice custimization options as well.

Google XML Sitemaps – a must have in your plugin arsenal with more than 16 million downloads!

Social Media Feather – another great social media plugin.

SumoMe – amazing set of free tools to grow your website traffic. They offer a few additional paid products as well.

TablePress – free plugin to help you quickly create charts. Amazing plugin and it gets great feedback from everyone who uses it.

VaultPress – better safe than sorry. A subscription service offering realtime backup, automated security scanning, and support from WordPress experts.

WebEngage – get feedback and resolve support queries. Conduct short surveys. Display push notification messages. Love your customers? Get WebEngage now!

WordPress SEO – almost 15 million downloads and a great plugin to help you optimize your online business.

Genesis Framework and Themes – I am a very happy user of the genesis framework and their child themes. Easy to set up, customize and full of nice features.

To Be Continued…

I’m sure I will expand this list of recommendations in the future.

Contact me if you like me to try your favorite tool in one of the above or related areas.

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