The 15 Best Website Tracking Tools in 2023 [Free + Advanced] (2024)

Traffic is usually the first thing that gets tracked on a website or app, by usingweb analytics tools. Traffic metrics can tell you how many site visitors you have, how they found you, how long they spend browsing different pages, and how frequently they’re converting into customers.

What traffic metrics can you track?

Bounce rate
Pageviews
User source and medium
Session duration or time on page
Visitor location
Device type (i.e. desktop, tablet, or mobile)
New vs returning users
Event tracking
Goal conversions

5 top website traffic tracking tools

Google Analytics
Adobe Analytics
Matomo
Clicky
Fathom

1. Google Analytics

Google Analytics GA4 dashboard

What it is: Google Analytics is the veteran of the list and the most popular website analytics tool.The latest version,GA4, puts more emphasis on how visitors use your site, not just traffic.

What you can track: new and returning users, engagement, revenue, retention, demographics, conversions, and events.

Price: free (with limits); upgrade to the paid version (Google 360) for more features and unlimited traffic.

2. Adobe Analytics

Page traffic report in Adobe Analytics

What it is:Adobe Analyticsis a traffic analytics and multichannel data collection tool, designed for advanced users and enterprise companies.

What you can track:business intelligence (BI) and traffic data from websites, emails, and apps, including pageviews, unique visitors, purchases, order attribution, segmentation, andcustomer journeyanalytics.

Price:on request.

3. Matomo (formerly Piwik)

Matomo dashboard

What it is:Matomois an open-source web traffic analytics tool.

4. Clicky

Clicky analytics dashboard

What it is:Clickyis a real-time website traffic analytics tool.

What you can track:real-time data, including visitors, pageviews, and events.

Price:from free for 3,000 pageviews/day.

5. Fathom

Fathom’s one-page traffic dashboard

What it is:Fathomis a simple,privacy-focusedanalytics tool.

What you can track:site views, unique views, average time on site, bounce rate, goal completions, referrers, country, user device, and browser type.

Price:from $14/month for 100,000 pageviews.

By tracking traffic, you’ll get a good idea of what’s happening on your website—the most popular pages, where people leave from, and where they spend time browsing. Now, you’re ready to trackhow people interact with your pages.

What is behavior tracking?

Behavior tracking shows you where your usersclickand how they scroll or navigate between pages. The main goal behinduser behaviortracking is tomeasure user experience, find opportunities to improve UX and, as a result, increase conversions and revenue.

What tools can you use to track user behavior?

Heatmaps: see an overview of where visitors click, tap, and scroll on a page.
Session recordings: view how each user browses across multiple pages.
A/B testing: create page design variations and test which performs better.
Surveys andfeedback widgets: get direct feedback from users and track sentiment and satisfaction over time.
User testing: interview users as they navigate your site.

4 user behavior tracking tools to improve your website

Hotjar
Google Optimize
Optimizely
UserTesting

1. Hotjar

Hotjar provides visual behavior insights, in-the-moment feedback, and 1:1 interviews—all in one place

What it is: Hotjar (that’s us, hi there! 👋) is a digital experience insights platform that helps you connect the dots between what your users do—and why—all in one place, so you can confidently create and optimize user experiences that convert..

What you can track: product experience insights like aggregated visitor clicks, scrolls, and mouse movement with heatmaps; individual user browsing behavior with session recordings; and user feedback with on-site surveys, a feedback widget, and user interviews.

Price: get started for free.

3 ways to track and analyze user behavior with Hotjar

1. Visualize interaction patterns with Heatmaps Engagement zones

Visualize click, move, and scroll data in a single grid view

What is it: Heatmaps Engagement zones measure aggregated clicks, taps, scrolls, and mouse movement data on any page (from a website or single-page application).

When to use it: use Engagement zones to optimize the layout, content, or usability of any page based on user engagement patterns. See where users interact the most (or least) and get a visual overview of what content is getting seen and what’s being ignored. Use this insight to make changes to your pages and improve UX.

3. Gather insights directly from your users with Surveys and Feedback

Users can provide feedback on specific on-page elements

What is it: Hotjar Surveys and Feedback are voice-of-the-customer (VoC) tools that give you insight directly from the best source of data: your users. Collect in-the-moment feedback with floating or embedded widgets, or trigger surveys as popups, screen takeovers, buttons, or send them by email.

When to use it: use surveys to track customer satisfaction (CSAT surveys), how easy (or hard) it is to use your site or product (CES surveys), how likely they are to recommend your products or brand (NPS surveys) over time, and more, with 30+ survey templates.

Once you’re tracking website traffic and user behavior, the only thing left is to measure how your website is performing in relation to your business goals.

Tracking website performance is aboutmeasuring the metrics that matter most to your business. For an SEO team, that might be website speed or keyword rankings; for a product team, it’s likely customer churn orretention.

Whatever metrics matter to your business, there’s a tool to track them.

What performance metrics can you track?

Churn
Retention
Page speed
Keyword rankings
Ecommerce sales
Backlinks
Social media shares

6 website and product performance tracking tools

Mixpanel
Google Search Console
Chartmogul
Ahrefs
Kissmetrics
Salesforce

1. Mixpanel

Mixpanel product dashboard

What it is:Mixpanelis a product analytics tool that tracks performance on mobile and web applications.

What you can track:product metrics like activation, retention, and churn.

Price:free for up to 100k monthly users.

2. Google Search Console

Google Search Console performance dashboard

What it is:Search Consoleis a free search optimization tool from Google.

What you can track:measure SEO performance, view keyword impressions and clicks, see your backlinks, and check for crawling and speed errors.

Price:free.

3. ChartMogul

ChartMogul overview dashboard

What it is:ChartMogulis subscription and revenue tracking software designed for SaaS companies.

What you can track:MRR, ARR, CLV, churn, revenue, sales, and subscriber numbers.

Price:from free for up to $10k MRR.

4. Ahrefs

Ahrefs site explorer dashboard

What it is:Ahrefsis a suite of SEO tools to monitor and grow website traffic from search engines. (We're big fans of Ahrefs, ourselves!)

What you can track:keyword rankings, backlinks, website speed, and broken links for your own and competitor websites.

Price:from $99/month.

5. Kissmetrics

Kissmetrics SaaS metric dashboard

What it is:Kissmetricsis product and marketing analytics software for SaaS and ecommerce websites.

What you can track:product metrics like sign-ups, churn, and MRR; ecommerce metrics like sales, revenue, and cart-to-purchase conversion rate.

Price:from $299/month.

6. Salesforce Marketing Cloud

Salesforce customer 360 audiences dashboard

What it is:Salesforce Marketing Cloudis an enterprise-level CRM (customer relationship management) analytics platform for marketers with several add-on tools, including Customer 360 Audiences, Loyalty Management, Social Studio, and Advertising Studio.

What you can track:email and ad campaign performance, key customer journey touchpoints, and website engagement.

Price:on request.