Data Ship Systems Inc

Ecommerce Solutions

End to end, EDC only or anything in-between. That's how we do e-commerce.

    Web Analytics

                For monitoring the on-site behaviors of your users and the performance of your
                site, use the following free tools

                • Google Analytics – http://www.google.com/analytics

                • Yahoo Web Analytics – http://analytics.yahoo.com/


                Search

                Use the following search tools to learn what keywords your customer/potential
                customers are searching for so that you can optimize your site accordingly.

                • Google Adwords Keyword Tool –
                https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal

                • SEOMOZ has set of Free tools – http://www.seomoz.org/tools

                • Google Webmaster Central – Provides you data on how your sites in crawled and
                indexed by Google.

                • Bing Webmaster Center – Provides you data on how your sites in crawled and
                indexed by Bing.

                • Google Trends – http://www.google.com/trends

                • Google Insight for Search – http://www.google.com/insights/search/#

                Social Media

                I already mentioned two tools in my blog post titled “Free Social Media
                Monitoring Tools for Small Businesses”, here they are again (and two new ones) :

                   1. Google Alerts – http://www.google.com/alerts
                   2. SM2 by Techrigy – http://sm2.techrigy.com/
                   3. Twitter Search – http://search.twitter.com/
                   4. Yelp.com – Good for small and medium size businesses. Find out what
                   customers are saying about you and your competitors.

                Here are some more but I have not used all of them,
                http://mashable.com/2008/12/24/free-brand-monitoring-tools/

                Competitive Analysis

                Want to know how your competitors are doing compared to you? Use some of the
                tools listed below. Keep in mind that all of these tools use different ways to
                collect the data and hence the actual data you get from one tool will differ
                from the other but overall it should provide you good competitive information.

                   1. Search and Social Media Tools – Many of the tools listed above can provide
                   you competitive information as well. E.g. Set SM2 to monitor the keywords
                   that describes your competitor and you can start to see what customers are
                   saying about your competitors
                   2. Alexa – http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo
                   3. Compete – http://www.compete.com/
                   4. Quantcast – http://www.quantcast.com/
                   5. Google Trends for Websites – http://trends.google.com/websites
                   6. Google Ad Planner – http://www.google.com/adplanner. Here is my review of
                   Google Ad Planner

                Like, I mentioned above this is not the most comprehensive list but it should
                get you started. Do you have a favorite free tool that is not on this list?
                Leave a comment on this blog post or send me an email with the name of the
                tool.