ClickTracks Releases 5.0

Santa Cruz, Calif.-based Web analytics company ClickTracks released version 5.0 of its metrics software today, adding some enhancements and new functionality. The additions are designed to make the product more robust by providing deeper analytics and an integrated help system.

“The ClickTracks Way” is among the new features added to the 5.0 versions of entry-level ClickTracks Analyzer and ClickTracks Professional. It is a context-sensitive, in-program mechanism designed to guide users through the comprehensive metrics system, while helping marketers interpret the data.

John Marshall, CEO of ClickTracks, says that the the ClickTracks Way feature was created because “customers don’t get as much out of it [the analytics application] because they don’t know the capabilities.” The ClickTracks Way builds upon the premise that motivated Marshall to begin the company almost two years ago, to “encourage users who don’t do Web analytics for a living to learn about their visitors.”

“We wanted to build a product that was less like Oracle financial and more like Microsoft Access – a very powerful database used by big and small companies,” says Marshall.

Both the Analyzer and Professional versions gain a “page views per visitor” function, as well as the ability to show data trends and information over a six-month period.

The ClickTracks Professional version, which counts among its corporate users companies such as AT&T, Nordstrom, Sega, and WebEx, adds even more features to the upgrade. The “What’s Changed Report” informs visitors of unusual and significant activity since the last session, calculating rising and falling search queries, referrers, visits, entry pages, and activity by country. Users can analyze the material to form in-depth studies of pay-per-click and paid search campaigns, which can be used to modify existing search programs.

Marshall says that it’s tricky to understand why certain keywords work and don’t work, so the application has the capability to determine “ROAS” – return on advertising spend – using its metrics as well as imported campaign data from Google and Overture.

ClickTracks, which earned the distinction of “Best Web Site Analytics Tool” in the 2003 ClickZ Marketing Excellence Awards, is available as a download or hosted application. Pricing ranges from $495 for the download or $49 per month for the hosted versions of Analyzer to $2,995 for the Professional download or $239 per month. An ISP version that works with up to 30 domains begins at $3,600 per year.

“Big companies still want to spend a reasonable amount of money on their Web analytics,” comments Marshall. “Some Web analytics have overpromised and under delivered, and the quality of the data isn’t very good. Customers got wise to it and won’t spend $5,000 per month.”