Web Analytics Tool Box from OptimizeSmart
In this article I have shared the web analytics tools, that I use and recommend.
Google Analytics Debugging Tools
Google Tag Manager Debug Console – use this tool to make sure that your tags, triggers, variables and data layers work as expected.
Google Tag Assistant is a chrome extension to verify the installation of various Google tags on a web page.
Google Tag Assistant Recording is used to identify, validate and troubleshoot the installation of various Google Tags across many pages.
Google Analytics Troubleshooter Tools can help you in fixing an issue around certain analytics topic
Google Analytics Diagnostic Notification Tool makes regular evaluation of your Google Analytics tracking code, account configuration and data in order to find implementation issues and configuration anomalies.
Fiddler log each and every hit that you send to Google Analytics server and by using its inbuilt filters you can filter out these hits and analyze them.
Google Analytics Tag Auditing Tools are used to identify various tags (tag is a piece of JavaScript code) on a website
Google Analytics Measurement Protocol Hit Builder is the best and easiest tool to create and test payload data.
Postman allows you to send payload data via GET method. It also allow you to send multiple hits in a single protocol requests.
For the complete list of Google Analytics debugging tools, check out this article: Beginners guide to Google Analytics Debugging
Get the E-book (52 Pages)
Get the E-Book (37 Pages)
Google Tag Manager tools
Code Editor for GTM – chrome extension for getting full code editor within the GTM interface.
Data Slayer – chrome extension for debugging GTM.
GTM Sonar – chrome extension to debug page template to check whether it works with GTM auto event listeners.
Google Tag Manager Help Center – information on setting up and using Google Tag Manager
Google Tag Manager for Web Tracking – developers guide on setting up Google Tag Manager
Tag Manager Injector – chrome extension for injecting GTM container tags into a webpage. comes handy for testing.
Free AJAX Event Listener for Google Tag Manager
Google Analytics setup tools
Analytics.js Field Reference – list of all the configurable field names.
GA Campaign URL – Google sheet add-on which simplify tagging URLs
GAConfig – event tracking code generator, URL builder.
GA.js Field Reference – list of all the configurable field names.
GA Funnel Builder – it is a paditrack alternative. It helps you create funnels on the fly.
GA Funnel Builder 2 – another version of funnel builder in which step 1 is mandatory.
Google Analytics Help Center – information on setting up and using Google Analytics
Google Analytics Mobile App Tracking – documentation on mobile app tracking for IOS and Android devices.
Google Analytics Release notes
Google Analytics Web Tracking (ga.js) – Google’s documentation on ga.js library.
Google Analytics Enhanced Ecommerce Demo – tool to understand how enhanced ecommerce code works and how it can be implemented.
Google Analytics Implementation Guides and Solutions – implementation guides and solutions for reporting automation, data import, mobile developers, ecommerce platforms etc.
Google Analytics Solutions Gallery – tool to import dashboards, custom reports and advanced segments into Google Analytics.
Google URL Builder – tool to tag URLs with campaign tracking parameters.
Method Reference – Web Tracking (analytics.js) – universal analytics objects reference guide.
Universal Analytics Web Tracking (analytics.js) – Google’s documentation on analytics.js library.
What is my IP address – tool to find your IP address for creating IP based filters in Google Analytics.
Tools for Website Technical Audit
BuildWith – tool to determine server, CMS, Frameworks, tracking etc used by a website.
Default Channel Grouping channel definitions – provides current definition of various default channels used by Google Analytics.
Down For Everyone or Just Me – tool to find whether a website is down for everyone or just for you.
Five Second Test – show a visitor your site for 5 seconds and see what they remember. This tool is free to use, if you test other people’s pages.
GA Checker – tool which crawls a website (up to 10k pages) to find whether or not the web pages contain Google/Universal Analytics tracking code, GA remarketing code, Adwords remarketing code and Google Tag Manager code.
Page Speed insights – It is a browser independent tool used to measure the speed performance of web pages.
Robots.txt Validator – tool to validate robots.txt file of a website.
Screen Fly – tool to test your website on desktop, tablet, mobile and TV.
Spy on Web – this tool allows you to find websites that are using your Google Analytics tracking code.
Test MY Site by think with Google – tool to test, how mobile friendly your website is.
Data extraction tools
Google Big Query – Google’s documentation on big query.
Excel for analytics cheatsheet – most important tricks and tips to speed up data extraction.
Excel functions list – exhaustive list and description of all excel functions.
Regex101 – tool to create and validate regular expressions.
Regular expression guide for analytics
Scraper – chrome extension which scrape data from web pages and export it to Google docs.
Screaming Frog SEO Spider – tool for on page analysis, finding server issues, tag auditing and finding web pages with zero traffic.
Google Analytics learning resources
Google Analytics Training Resources and Tutorials
Google Analytics Academy – free online courses on Google Analytics, Google Tag Manager and web analytics in general.
Google Analytics Academy Community – Google + community to enage with analytics experts, googlers and course students.
Google Analytics Blog – official Google Analytics blog.
Google Analytics community on Google Plus
Google Analytics IQ study guide – list various articles on Google Analytics.
Google Analytics YouTube – official Google Analytics youtube channel.
Google Analytics Forum – forum to ask questions about GA and to see the issues webmasters are facing.
Mozilla Developers Network – JavaScript – good resource on learning JavaScript.
Google Analytics API
Analytics Canvas – paid tool for report automation, accessing GA API, data integration, query partitioning etc.
Configuration and Reporting APIs limits and quotas – describes limits and quotas for various GA APIs.
Google Analytics Account Explorer – tool through which you can identify IDs (account IDs, web property IDs, view IDs and table IDs) which are required in order to access GA via APIs.
Google Analytics Configuration APIs – create accounts, manage users and account data with APIs.
Google Analytics Dimensions and Metric Explorer – list and describe all the dimensions and metrics (API names, UI names) available in GA. It also tell you which dimensions and metrics can be queried together.
Google Analytics Query Explorer – tool to build and execute queries.
Google Analytics Reporting APIs – APIs to retrieve report data from Google Analytics.
Google Analytics Spreadsheet Add-on – chrome extension to access GA directly via core reporting API into a Google Spreadsheet.
Tools for enhancing Google Analytics reports
Table Booster for Google Analytics – chrome extension that visualize your tables with bar-charts, comparisons and heat-maps.
Page Analytics (by Google) – chrome extension for GA in-page analytics.
PanguinTool – tool to see how Google’s algorithm updates have impacted your website traffic.
Statistical Test for Google Analytics – chrome extension which run statistical significance test within Google Analytics.
Attribution modelling tools
Customer journey to online purchase – Multi channel funnel tool to improve marketing.
Consumer barometer with Google – tool to understand internet usage.
Google Analytics Premium / GA 360
Google Analytics Premium Community (by invitation only) – Official Google Analytics premium community page on Google
Google Analytics Premium Help Center – information on setting up and using Google Analytics Premium.
Social media analytics tools
Facebook Insights – tool for facebook fan page analysis
Fan Page Karma – paid tool for doing really in-depth analysis of your Facebook Fan page.
Followerwonk – analyse and track twitter followers
Google Alerts– track brand mentions.
Google Trends – tool to find what is trending on Google.
Klout– measures online influence of a person on a scale of 1 to 100.
Pinterest Analytics – tool to measure how users interact with your pins.
Peep mail – tool to find business email addresses
Rapportive – gmail plugin to find social media profiles of a contact right inside your inbox. Can also be used to verify email addresses.
Sharedcount– track social shares of any web page whether or not the page has sharing buttons installed.
Snap Bird – search the tweet history of any twitter profile.
Twitter Analytics – tool to measure tweet activity, followers and twitter cards performance.
YouTube Analytics – tool to track the performance of your Youtube videos, channel & watch pages.
Competitors traffic analysis tools
Google display planner – tool to research a specific placement.
Web Analytics Training platform
Web Analytics Training Course from OptimizeSmart
What is the difference between Digital Analytics and Google Analytics?
99.99% of course creators themselves don’t know the difference between Digital analytics, Google Analytics (GA) and Google Tag Manager (GTM).
So they are teaching GA and GTM in the name of teaching Digital analytics.
They just copy each other. Monkey see, monkey do.
But Digital analytics is not about GA, GTM.
It is about analyzing and interpreting data, setting up goals, strategies and KPIs.
It’s about creating strategic roadmap for your business.
Digital Analytics is the core skill. Google Analytics is just a tool used to implement ‘Digital Analytics’.
You can also implement ‘Digital analytics’ via other tools like ‘adobe analytics’, ‘kissmetrics’ etc.
Using Google Analytics without the good understanding of ‘Digital analytics’ is like driving around in a car, in a big city without understanding the traffic rules and road signs.
You are either likely to end up somewhere other than your destination or you get involved in an accident.
You learn data analysis and interpretation from Digital analytics and not from Google Analytics.
The direction in which your analysis will move, will determine the direction in which your marketing campaigns and eventually your company will move to get the highest possible return on investment.
You get that direction from ‘Digital analytics’ and not from ‘Google Analytics’.
You learn to set up KPIs, strategies and measurement framework for your business from ‘Digital analytics’ and not from ‘Google Analytics’.
So if you are taking a course only on 'Digital Analytics’, you are learning to use one of the tools of ‘Digital analytics’. You are not learning the ‘Digital analytics’ itself.
Since any person can learn to use Google Analytics in couple of weeks, you do no get any competitive advantage in the marketplace just by knowing GA.
You need to know lot more than GA in order to work in digital analytics and marketing field.
So what I have done, if you are interested, is I have put together a completely free training that will teach you exactly how I have been able to leverage digital analytics to generate floods of news sales and customers and how you can literally copy what I have done to get similar results.
You can sign up for the free training here: https://learn.optimizesmart.
I truly hope you find it helpful.
My best selling books on Digital Analytics and Conversion Optimization
Maths and Stats for Web Analytics and Conversion Optimization
This expert guide will teach you how to leverage the knowledge of maths and statistics in order to accurately interpret data and take actions, which can quickly improve the bottom-line of your online business.
Master the Essentials of Email Marketing Analytics
This book focuses solely on the ‘analytics’ that power your email marketing optimization program and will help you dramatically reduce your cost per acquisition and increase marketing ROI by tracking the performance of the various KPIs and metrics used for email marketing.
Attribution Modelling in Google Analytics and Beyond
Attribution modelling is the process of determining the most effective marketing channels for investment. This book has been written to help you implement attribution modelling. It will teach you how to leverage the knowledge of attribution modelling in order to allocate marketing budget and understand buying behaviour.
Attribution Modelling in Google Ads and Facebook
This book has been written to help you implement attribution modelling in Google Ads (Google AdWords) and Facebook. It will teach you, how to leverage the knowledge of attribution modelling in order to understand the customer purchasing journey and determine the most effective marketing channels for investment.
Himanshu Sharma
Digital Marketing Consultant and Founder of Optimizesmart.com
In this article I have shared the web analytics tools, that I use and recommend.
Google Analytics Debugging Tools
Google Tag Manager Debug Console – use this tool to make sure that your tags, triggers, variables and data layers work as expected.
Google Tag Assistant is a chrome extension to verify the installation of various Google tags on a web page.
Google Tag Assistant Recording is used to identify, validate and troubleshoot the installation of various Google Tags across many pages.
Google Analytics Troubleshooter Tools can help you in fixing an issue around certain analytics topic
Google Analytics Diagnostic Notification Tool makes regular evaluation of your Google Analytics tracking code, account configuration and data in order to find implementation issues and configuration anomalies.
Fiddler log each and every hit that you send to Google Analytics server and by using its inbuilt filters you can filter out these hits and analyze them.
Google Analytics Tag Auditing Tools are used to identify various tags (tag is a piece of JavaScript code) on a website
Google Analytics Measurement Protocol Hit Builder is the best and easiest tool to create and test payload data.
Postman allows you to send payload data via GET method. It also allow you to send multiple hits in a single protocol requests.
For the complete list of Google Analytics debugging tools, check out this article: Beginners guide to Google Analytics Debugging
Get the E-book (52 Pages)
Get the E-Book (37 Pages)
Google Tag Manager tools
Code Editor for GTM – chrome extension for getting full code editor within the GTM interface.
Data Slayer – chrome extension for debugging GTM.
GTM Sonar – chrome extension to debug page template to check whether it works with GTM auto event listeners.
Google Tag Manager Help Center – information on setting up and using Google Tag Manager
Google Tag Manager for Web Tracking – developers guide on setting up Google Tag Manager
Tag Manager Injector – chrome extension for injecting GTM container tags into a webpage. comes handy for testing.
Free AJAX Event Listener for Google Tag Manager
Google Analytics setup tools
Analytics.js Field Reference – list of all the configurable field names.
GA Campaign URL – Google sheet add-on which simplify tagging URLs
GAConfig – event tracking code generator, URL builder.
GA.js Field Reference – list of all the configurable field names.
GA Funnel Builder – it is a paditrack alternative. It helps you create funnels on the fly.
GA Funnel Builder 2 – another version of funnel builder in which step 1 is mandatory.
Google Analytics Help Center – information on setting up and using Google Analytics
Google Analytics Mobile App Tracking – documentation on mobile app tracking for IOS and Android devices.
Google Analytics Release notes
Google Analytics Web Tracking (ga.js) – Google’s documentation on ga.js library.
Google Analytics Enhanced Ecommerce Demo – tool to understand how enhanced ecommerce code works and how it can be implemented.
Google Analytics Implementation Guides and Solutions – implementation guides and solutions for reporting automation, data import, mobile developers, ecommerce platforms etc.
Google Analytics Solutions Gallery – tool to import dashboards, custom reports and advanced segments into Google Analytics.
Google URL Builder – tool to tag URLs with campaign tracking parameters.
Method Reference – Web Tracking (analytics.js) – universal analytics objects reference guide.
Universal Analytics Web Tracking (analytics.js) – Google’s documentation on analytics.js library.
What is my IP address – tool to find your IP address for creating IP based filters in Google Analytics.
Tools for Website Technical Audit
BuildWith – tool to determine server, CMS, Frameworks, tracking etc used by a website.
Default Channel Grouping channel definitions – provides current definition of various default channels used by Google Analytics.
Down For Everyone or Just Me – tool to find whether a website is down for everyone or just for you.
Five Second Test – show a visitor your site for 5 seconds and see what they remember. This tool is free to use, if you test other people’s pages.
GA Checker – tool which crawls a website (up to 10k pages) to find whether or not the web pages contain Google/Universal Analytics tracking code, GA remarketing code, Adwords remarketing code and Google Tag Manager code.
Page Speed insights – It is a browser independent tool used to measure the speed performance of web pages.
Robots.txt Validator – tool to validate robots.txt file of a website.
Screen Fly – tool to test your website on desktop, tablet, mobile and TV.
Spy on Web – this tool allows you to find websites that are using your Google Analytics tracking code.
Test MY Site by think with Google – tool to test, how mobile friendly your website is.
Data extraction tools
Google Big Query – Google’s documentation on big query.
Excel for analytics cheatsheet – most important tricks and tips to speed up data extraction.
Excel functions list – exhaustive list and description of all excel functions.
Regex101 – tool to create and validate regular expressions.
Regular expression guide for analytics
Scraper – chrome extension which scrape data from web pages and export it to Google docs.
Screaming Frog SEO Spider – tool for on page analysis, finding server issues, tag auditing and finding web pages with zero traffic.
Google Analytics learning resources
Google Analytics Training Resources and Tutorials
Google Analytics Academy – free online courses on Google Analytics, Google Tag Manager and web analytics in general.
Google Analytics Academy Community – Google + community to enage with analytics experts, googlers and course students.
Google Analytics Blog – official Google Analytics blog.
Google Analytics community on Google Plus
Google Analytics IQ study guide – list various articles on Google Analytics.
Google Analytics YouTube – official Google Analytics youtube channel.
Google Analytics Forum – forum to ask questions about GA and to see the issues webmasters are facing.
Mozilla Developers Network – JavaScript – good resource on learning JavaScript.
Google Analytics API
Analytics Canvas – paid tool for report automation, accessing GA API, data integration, query partitioning etc.
Configuration and Reporting APIs limits and quotas – describes limits and quotas for various GA APIs.
Google Analytics Account Explorer – tool through which you can identify IDs (account IDs, web property IDs, view IDs and table IDs) which are required in order to access GA via APIs.
Google Analytics Configuration APIs – create accounts, manage users and account data with APIs.
Google Analytics Dimensions and Metric Explorer – list and describe all the dimensions and metrics (API names, UI names) available in GA. It also tell you which dimensions and metrics can be queried together.
Google Analytics Query Explorer – tool to build and execute queries.
Google Analytics Reporting APIs – APIs to retrieve report data from Google Analytics.
Google Analytics Spreadsheet Add-on – chrome extension to access GA directly via core reporting API into a Google Spreadsheet.
Tools for enhancing Google Analytics reports
Table Booster for Google Analytics – chrome extension that visualize your tables with bar-charts, comparisons and heat-maps.
Page Analytics (by Google) – chrome extension for GA in-page analytics.
PanguinTool – tool to see how Google’s algorithm updates have impacted your website traffic.
Statistical Test for Google Analytics – chrome extension which run statistical significance test within Google Analytics.
Attribution modelling tools
Customer journey to online purchase – Multi channel funnel tool to improve marketing.
Consumer barometer with Google – tool to understand internet usage.
Google Analytics Premium / GA 360
Google Analytics Premium Community (by invitation only) – Official Google Analytics premium community page on Google
Google Analytics Premium Help Center – information on setting up and using Google Analytics Premium.
Social media analytics tools
Facebook Insights – tool for facebook fan page analysis
Fan Page Karma – paid tool for doing really in-depth analysis of your Facebook Fan page.
Followerwonk – analyse and track twitter followers
Google Alerts– track brand mentions.
Google Trends – tool to find what is trending on Google.
Klout– measures online influence of a person on a scale of 1 to 100.
Pinterest Analytics – tool to measure how users interact with your pins.
Peep mail – tool to find business email addresses
Rapportive – gmail plugin to find social media profiles of a contact right inside your inbox. Can also be used to verify email addresses.
Sharedcount– track social shares of any web page whether or not the page has sharing buttons installed.
Snap Bird – search the tweet history of any twitter profile.
Twitter Analytics – tool to measure tweet activity, followers and twitter cards performance.
YouTube Analytics – tool to track the performance of your Youtube videos, channel & watch pages.
Competitors traffic analysis tools
Google display planner – tool to research a specific placement.
Web Analytics Training platform
Web Analytics Training Course from OptimizeSmart
What is the difference between Digital Analytics and Google Analytics?
99.99% of course creators themselves don’t know the difference between Digital analytics, Google Analytics (GA) and Google Tag Manager (GTM).
So they are teaching GA and GTM in the name of teaching Digital analytics.
They just copy each other. Monkey see, monkey do.
But Digital analytics is not about GA, GTM.
It is about analyzing and interpreting data, setting up goals, strategies and KPIs.
It’s about creating strategic roadmap for your business.
Digital Analytics is the core skill. Google Analytics is just a tool used to implement ‘Digital Analytics’.
You can also implement ‘Digital analytics’ via other tools like ‘adobe analytics’, ‘kissmetrics’ etc.
Using Google Analytics without the good understanding of ‘Digital analytics’ is like driving around in a car, in a big city without understanding the traffic rules and road signs.
You are either likely to end up somewhere other than your destination or you get involved in an accident.
You learn data analysis and interpretation from Digital analytics and not from Google Analytics.
The direction in which your analysis will move, will determine the direction in which your marketing campaigns and eventually your company will move to get the highest possible return on investment.
You get that direction from ‘Digital analytics’ and not from ‘Google Analytics’.
You learn to set up KPIs, strategies and measurement framework for your business from ‘Digital analytics’ and not from ‘Google Analytics’.
So if you are taking a course only on 'Digital Analytics’, you are learning to use one of the tools of ‘Digital analytics’. You are not learning the ‘Digital analytics’ itself.
Since any person can learn to use Google Analytics in couple of weeks, you do no get any competitive advantage in the marketplace just by knowing GA.
You need to know lot more than GA in order to work in digital analytics and marketing field.
So what I have done, if you are interested, is I have put together a completely free training that will teach you exactly how I have been able to leverage digital analytics to generate floods of news sales and customers and how you can literally copy what I have done to get similar results.
You can sign up for the free training here: https://learn.optimizesmart.
I truly hope you find it helpful.
My best selling books on Digital Analytics and Conversion Optimization
Maths and Stats for Web Analytics and Conversion Optimization
This expert guide will teach you how to leverage the knowledge of maths and statistics in order to accurately interpret data and take actions, which can quickly improve the bottom-line of your online business.
Master the Essentials of Email Marketing Analytics
This book focuses solely on the ‘analytics’ that power your email marketing optimization program and will help you dramatically reduce your cost per acquisition and increase marketing ROI by tracking the performance of the various KPIs and metrics used for email marketing.
Attribution Modelling in Google Analytics and Beyond
Attribution modelling is the process of determining the most effective marketing channels for investment. This book has been written to help you implement attribution modelling. It will teach you how to leverage the knowledge of attribution modelling in order to allocate marketing budget and understand buying behaviour.
Attribution Modelling in Google Ads and Facebook
This book has been written to help you implement attribution modelling in Google Ads (Google AdWords) and Facebook. It will teach you, how to leverage the knowledge of attribution modelling in order to understand the customer purchasing journey and determine the most effective marketing channels for investment.
Himanshu Sharma
Digital Marketing Consultant and Founder of Optimizesmart.com