10 useful web analytics tools

A selection of Kokoc Group

Text editor Notepad ++

Useful for analysts, contextual advertising specialists and all those who work with large amounts of repetitive information. “Out of the box” (in the basic configuration) can remove duplicate lines, extra spaces, sort the lines, change the encoding of texts. For any actions there is support for macros: you can automate different sequences of working with text: for example, make complex sequential replacements and substitutions of text with regular expressions. In addition, Notepad ++ allows you to simultaneously view and edit several documents, each of which opens in a new tab. There is the possibility of mass search and replace text in all open documents simultaneously or in documents from a specific folder. Also through the search, you can mark the lines with bookmarks, and then work with them: delete / copy / cut all selected or all not selected.
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DevTools developer panel embedded in the Chrome browser and its counterparts in Firefox Developer Tools, Firebug, Opera browsers

Despite the significant benefits and powerful functionality, this tool is undervalued. Using the Developer Tools, you can quickly view and edit the page code, check which scripts are loaded on it, whether they loaded and loaded, and read the history of access to any counters and analytics systems. And on the Network tab is the history of page accesses and scripts to external servers. In addition, developer tools allow you to fully work with cookies: change, add, delete, rename. Also in Devtools, on the Console tab, you can run JS scripts in the context of a page or any frame on the page. That is, it is possible to debug and edit scripts without reloading the page and correcting the code on the server side. So, for GTM debugging, you can see what values ​​the dataLayer object accepts: to do this, simply enter the dataLayer and press "enter".



There is a great free course on all the features of DevTools.


EditThisCookie extension

Allows you to add, delete, modify, search, block cookies using the pop-up panel. In fact, the same functionality is presented here as in one of the tabs in the DevTools panel, but some analysts prefer to use the extension, since data access can be obtained a little faster.



Tag Assistant Extension

A tool to verify the correctness of the tags Google Analyayics, Google Remarketing, Google Tag Manager, and indeed almost all Google scripts that can stand on the site. It scans the resource page and shows which codes are installed on it, and also makes conclusions about their performance and gives recommendations for correcting errors.



R: Plugin Package : Analytics

Allows you to take data from Google Analytics, process it, and then display summary data or build graphs. At the same time, the tool is capable of processing large amounts of data, although such a task, if it had to be performed manually, would have taken the analyst considerable time. Plug-ins are especially useful when non-standard, large and very complex reports are needed.



K50 Plugin in Power Query

It uses a similar approach to the previous one and allows you to export data from the Yandex.Metrica API to Excel using the Power Query scripting language.



Ghostery and Wappalyzer

A group of plugins to find out what codes are installed on the site. Unlike Tag Assistant, they calculate not only Google scripts, but any third-party plug-ins. Thanks to them, having received a new site to work, you can see what is installed on it, or analyze the resources of competitors. Plug-ins make it possible to block scripts and pixels supplied by companies to which you do not have confidence.



Redirect Path extension

Shows all redirects from one URL to another. Once we encountered a non-trivial problem: Google AdWords traffic in Google Analytics was not correctly tracked on one of the projects. They tried everything, until using Redirect Path they did not find out that when redirecting from one URL to another, the gclid tag was automatically translated to lower case, so Google Analytics did not understand what the link was.



Roger Watcher , GA Debug , Event Tracking Tracker

A group of extensions for Google Chrome that allow you to analyze what information is sent to Google Analytics: for example, event, page view, transaction data. In this case, the data is supplied in a more convenient form than in the “Panel of Developers”.



K50 statistics

The free analytics system Yandex.Direct, which tightens both the site data (impressions, clicks, expenses) and information from Google Analytics (visits, transactions, income). You can calculate and display on the fly any metrics of interest to the marketer, including DDR, SRO, ROI, AOV. It is noteworthy that in this analytics system Calltouch is supported, so you can analyze the data on calls: for example, how many calls came from the special placement block, and which from guaranteed and dynamic impressions.