HitsLink vs. StatCounter

If you're looking for a comprehensive, user-friendly web analytics tool, you should definitely consider Hitslink. Before you subscribe to the software, take a test run on their Demo version of the site, as it behaves exactly like the full professional version. The biggest disadvantage is that Google+ registered users' search engine traffic data will be mostly (if not completely) blocked. However, this drawback is rarely a significant hindrance to analyzing your website's traffic, but it is something to be aware of.

Free services provide a wonderful resource for people on tight budgets. If willing to put forth work in data managing/analysis and If basic high traffic information or drilling down specific users in low traffic situations is needed, then StatCounter may fit your needs. If automation and low overhead are a high priority then some more expensive packages can provide the same and more information with less hassle. Because StatCounter is free, there is low risk to see if StatCounter works in your specific usage scenario.

• View website traffic stats and trends in user-friendly charts, graphs, and lists.
• Easily parses out website users by search engine, search term, geographic location, referral website, and other specific characteristics.
• Shows which websites users are coming from, what pages on your site they've landed on and which ones they leave your site from.
• Gives statistics on how long users are viewing specific pages, which allows for the analyzing of the effectiveness of each webpage on a website.
• Easily view real-time as well as long-term traffic statistics

• I can visit my site in real time showing pages visited and the duration of the visit.
• It shows very detailed data on where visitors came from.
• I could monitor the performance of campaigns in real-time as visitors came to my site from a promotion.

Incentivized

• Specific information such as search term and geographic location is blocked for users coming into your site through Google who are also signed into a Google+ account, making it increasingly more difficult to analyze trends as more and more people acquire Google+ accounts. This is part of Google's strategy to make companies pay them directly through their Google Analytics software, and it is working against services like Hitslink.

• For the free version data logging is limited to two weeks, which requires manual pulling of the data (CSV or excel formats) on a regular basis which can become tedious.
• For offline graphing/presentations, data must be re synthesized/visualized. This typical requires someone manual manipulation the data or develop scripts or coding to improve the collection of the data for offline presentation and records.
• Lacks some of the pretty visuals that can be seen in competitors such as Google Analytics.
• Lacks user specific in depth tracking across multiple services (mailchimp, google etc), like more fully featured platforms (Kissmetrics) are able to provide.

Hitslink is as useful as it is user-friendly. I haven't seen another website analytics tool as comprehensive and at the same time straightforward as this service. The only downside of Hitslink is Google's blocking of information from its registered Google+ users to the software. As Google+ continues to reign in more of the population, I can see this being a significant problem for Hitslink to overcome. However, there is still a vast majority of search engine users whose actions are visible through Hitslink, and as long as this stays the case, the service will be an invaluable tool for website administrators.

I have not had any issues with malfunctions when using statcounter, so that would lead me to continue using the program. I would like to see more social media measuring tools, but again, we don't use the program to dig really deep. We're just looking to figure out who is reading what articles on our website are the most liked. And it helps lead our editorial team in the right direction.

The service is incredibly intuitive and very easy to learn. The only drawback is not having a mobile-optimized website to easily view website reports on the go. But on a PC or Mac, Hitslink is as user friendly as it gets. I have yet to see a navigation system on any SaaS website that makes a service that is this comprehensive seem so straight-forward.

I never have to call tech support and never get frustrated because I can't get the information that I need.

Statcounter excels with the simplicity and efficiency of the analytics. You can see exactly what's going on on your sites without the need to dig into complex google analytics data.

Incentivized

• Faster lead conversion
• Improvement of the effectiveness of landing pages (and all webpages on our sites for that matter)
• Increased employee efficiency by allowing us to make targeted changes to webpages in real time

• It's been great to track positive reactions to changes in our website and new product offerings
• Also a great way to roughly estimate the demand and customer base for your products
• Also identifies what areas of the website could be improved base on low traffic

Incentivized