My app of the week is a very useful analytics client by Thomas Blackburn. I have used a number of analytics apps over the last 12 months and I would say that this is not only the best but also the one that is nearest to Google Analytics itself.
You sign in with your Google Analytics account and you are presented with the profiles that you have set up for your various sites. Pick a profile and then you are able to start to drill down into your chosen sites data. You can start with a summary of visitors for today, yesterday or the last 28 days. There is, of course, the option to set your own date range.
I find with most of the analytics packages that they are OK if you need to check some basic info quickly when you are away from my PC or laptop. You know the sort of thing, you are out shopping when a client calls and asks why they have suddenly had twice the number of enquiries in the last three days. Normally I can check the visitor stats and advise them that in the last three days I have registered their Blog with Feedburner and since then the traffic to the site has doubled, with the bulk of the new visitors coming through Feedburner.
With AnalyticsPro I have a whole raft of information at my finger tips including:
- Countries
- Location
- Language
- Visitor Loyalty
- Browser
- Operating System
- Traffic Sources
- Search Keywords
- AdWords campaigns
- Plus many more
The app loads quickly and gives you the data you request rapidly, suggesting that the code has been really well optimised. It is a very secure app and uses Google’s API to transmit and receive data.
I think the best endorsement I can give is that during this week I was speaking to a client and we were discussing her AdWords campaign, as a result of information that I gleaned from AnalyticsPro relating to which pages are the most popular on their site we have been able to tweak the AdWords campaign and are looking forward to gaining extra leverage from the clients budget.
I admit I could have reached the same conclusion if I had been at my desk. What surprised me was that we were able to reach the decision while I was sitting on a park bench with my dogs.
The UI is excellent with items nicely spaced out and the app is intuitive to use. This is not an app that I just recommend, this is an app that I have been using all week and will continue to use for the foreseeable future.
You can download Analytics Pro from the Apple App Store. At £3.99 you may think that it is a little pricey for an app, but what price do you put on having information at your fingertips? In my opinion this is the best analytics package for the iPhone.