A Practical Software Directory for Solo Builders
Understanding visits, actions and the experience of using your website
Website analytics helps you understand how people find your pages, what they do there and where they may encounter problems.
Review traffic sources, measure actions such as downloads and enquiries, and explore how visitors move through your website. Some tools provide numerical reports; others use heatmaps and session replays to help investigate behaviour. Reporting services can also bring existing data together. Choose around the questions you need to answer, check the setup and privacy controls, and focus on changes that could improve the experience for your visitors.
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Contentsquare helps you investigate how people experience your website through heatmaps, session replays and conversion funnels. See where visitors click, how far they scroll and where they leave a sequence of pages, then investigate possible obstacles. Its ongoing free Experience Analytics plan currently includes one project, up to 200,000 monthly sessions and one month of data access, alongside basic surveys and error monitoring. Paid plans add longer history and more advanced analysis. Install its tracking tag and review the capture settings before collecting data. It is useful when you want to explore the behaviour behind your headline traffic figures.
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Fathom Analytics provides a compact dashboard for reviewing website traffic, popular pages and referral sources, with event and revenue tracking for actions you want to measure. Its approach avoids cookies and focuses on aggregated visitor information, making it an option for businesses seeking simpler, privacy-focused reporting. Plans start at US$15 per month, with the entry allowance shared by pageviews and custom events across your sites. A seven-day free trial requires a payment card and converts to a subscription unless cancelled. There is no ongoing free plan. Check its live demonstration to see whether the reporting covers your needs.
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Google Analytics measures activity across websites and apps, helping you understand where visitors come from and what they do after arriving. Review pages, traffic sources and recorded events, then identify important actions such as enquiries or purchases to assess against your goals. The standard service is free, with a paid Analytics 360 edition for larger organisations. Some information is collected after installation, while other events and business-specific measurements need additional configuration. Connections with Google’s advertising tools support campaign analysis. Its reporting is extensive, so beginners can start with a small number of useful reports and expand as their questions become more specific.
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Microsoft Clarity uses heatmaps and session recordings to help you investigate how visitors use your website. See patterns in clicks and scrolling, and review individual sessions to look for confusing navigation, repeated attempts or abandoned journeys. Summaries and filtering help narrow down the activity worth examining. The service is free on an ongoing basis, making it accessible when you want to explore behaviour alongside conventional traffic reports. Installation requires adding a tracking code or using a supported integration. Review its privacy and masking settings before capture, and use recordings to investigate possible issues rather than assuming they explain every visitor’s intentions.
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Power My Analytics collects data from supported analytics, advertising and other business platforms for use in dashboards and reports. Connect existing accounts and send their data to reporting tools such as Google Data Studio or Power BI, reducing repeated exports and spreadsheet updates. It supports analysing website results alongside wider marketing activity; you still need the original services to collect that activity. Paid plans vary by connected sources, accounts and destinations. A 14-day trial requires no credit card. Its ongoing free option uses sample data, so reporting on your own live accounts requires a subscription after the trial.
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