HitsLink Web Analytics Review

If you're toying with the idea of looking at more detailed stats for your site without needing overcomplicated reports, HitsLink is a good service to try. The interface is easy to use and the monthly fee starts at a rate smaller media sites can fit into their budgets.

HitsLink has tracked visitor activity for media companies WSJ.com, The New York Times, Forbes.com and CNN. The company offers a simplified service of all the reports most media sites need.

The web analytics tool displays page views and unique visitors, which can then be broken into specific time ranges, dates or over several months. For media sites, this information can be used to track everything from a website redesign's effectiveness over time to traffic patterns for your hourly coverage of a natural disaster.

Monitor certain events on your site or web traffic in general to stay ahead of your competition. Set up alerts to keep an eye on traffic spikes or slumps and decide how often HitsLink should report back to you with the numbers.

Real-time stats allow you to follow your visitors' paths on your site right now. Navigation reports show which page your visitors entered on, where they left, how much time they spent on a specific page and the average time they spent on the site. Charts are customizable to cut the clutter of numbers that aren't relevant to your site goals.

Smaller media sites have typically run into a budget problem when seeking out a professional web analytics tool. HitsLink rates start at $9.95 a month with three tiers of pricing programs. Larger media sites or those that need more detailed reports begin at $499.95 a month. Rates are also calculated based on how much traffic your site received in the previous month.

Trying HitsLink is easy. See the service in action with a live demo on the site. There's also a 30-day free trial if you do decide to sign up.

HitsLink doesn't offer all of the monitoring tools available on the market today, though. The service doesn't have any social media monitoring yet. But you can monitor your social media activity in a roundabout way.

If you send a tweet or post on your Facebook wall about a certain story and your traffic spikes, you can watch users through your HitsLink interface as they move around your site. Watching their activity helps you fill the holes in your coverage so you can continue the hype of a certain story and related content with homepage promotion, more tweets and Facebook wall posts.

The lack of social media monitoring isn't the only negative of using HitsLink. To implement HitsLink's service, you paste a script into each web page you want tracked. This isn't ideal for larger media sites that may have hundreds or thousands of pages they want tracked.

Flash videos can only be monitored with a special code on the page too. This is another negative if you're posting a lot of videos to your site. You'll need to paste code on each page to have each one tracked.

Multiple site monitoring will also cost you. Companies with many media properties or microsites will have to pay extra to have those sites monitored. Once you reach a combined 1 million page views, you'll move into another pricing fee determined by your site traffic. This can make your budget dwindle quickly.