Alexa Internet (discontinued) vs. HitsLink

I recommend Alexa for small businesses where you don't need much customization. Otherwise, I think big companies should implement their own tools.

Incentivized

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.

• It sources website analytics for most websites we're interested in tracking.
• Each website's dashboard is easy to understand and pull numbers from.
• We can get very nitty gritty with the numbers we're pulling or keep it simple by just pulling basic website visitor stats.

Incentivized

• 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

• Hidden costs may end up losing lot of money, Pricing model is not good
• API calls fail sometimes
• Website suggestions are irrelevant sometimes

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.

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.

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.

It is well structured for Internet analytics and traffic data.

Incentivized

If you want to focus only on your own web analytics, then Google Analytics is the way to go as no product will give you more accurate data. However, what Google Analytics cannot do is the competitive analysis functionality, which is where a product like Alexa comes in. It's about on par with SimilarWeb in many ways, they just go about the analytics in slightly different ways. Really, it comes down to personal preference as to which you prefer. Thankfully both offer free trials so you can test out the platforms before fully committing. SimilarWeb may be a bit better in terms of mobile web data.

Incentivized

• I am ready to write a full blown Alexa skill application to make money
• I got exposed to the Web development environment of Amazon web service by learning Alexa

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