5 must have analytics tools for startups

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A few plans don't usually work the way you want them to. Sometimes the plan that you are sure about doesn't work out well and sometimes the plan that was not even in your diary turns out to be the big thing for you. Hence it is important to use analytics tools to see what plan works better for your start-up.

Using analytics tools and making it a practice, actually helps you in your start-up to go a long way. How the analytics tools help you in your start-up depends on what stage of the start-up you are in.

If you are still in the initial discovery stage, then the analytics tools should help you in tracking your goals. With the help of analytics tools, you should be able to track metrics like a number of visitors, total visits, engagement of the visitors and the final conversion.

If you are in the growth stage, analytics can become a lot more fun and plays a key role in your start-up strategy. In this stage, analytics should help you in trying out variations, tracking the journey of the customers, testing the hypothesis before rolling out and a lot more. All you have to do is think, test analyze and implement your ideas in the start-up with the help of analytics.

If you are already in the matured stage of your start-up, benefits of analytics increase a lot more in helping you in more growth of your business. You should already be a master in using analytics tools at this stage and I won't need to tell you much.

So clearly, you will need the analytics tools during all the stages of your start-up.

But during the early stage, it helps you a lot as there will be a lot of randomness in your start-up and its operations. Without the help of analytics tools, you might end up in chaos or reduced efficiency, which would be risky.

As a new start-up, you always need to be as efficient as possible to make your business work. All of the statistics like sales, marketing, operation, product development etc., must be running peacefully and paralleled.

Choosing the right analytics tools helps in reducing a lot of efforts that you put into the start-up as these analytics tools help in encompassing all the important aspects of your start-up with ease.

Here are the 5 top most analytics tools that you can use for your start-up:

1. Google Analytics:

Google Analytics is one of the most preferred web analytics tools. It has numerous features and is packed with a lot of analytic reports. It has massive reporting capability and all its data can be exported using PDF, Excel or email. It has the ability to track multiple sites and also monitors social networking activity. Though it is free, it has a few limitations when it comes to real-time traffic and actions. It can sometimes get a little difficult to correlate its data with other devices or operations.

2. IQLECT:

IQLECT is one of the newest analytics tools. The best part about IQLECT is that it can connect to any data source which makes it the most versatile analytics tool. It can single-handedly perform the work of almost 5 to 7 different tools that a company would use for data analytics. This tool provides the platform for real-time analytics and the apps are meant to be used by all the end users easily. One disadvantage of this tool is that it requires a slightly complex setup for custom use. However, even though the real-time analytics tools are expensive today, IQLECT is very affordable.

3. Loggly:

It is another well established and famous company when it comes to logging analytics. Loggly provides good pricing with a lot of amazing features, but they fall short in the overall infrastructure management. Loggly is more focused on log analysis and provides models for web analysis and systems. Other than log, the other modules that they provide are not very comprehensive and correlating between different data sources could be a challenge. But in the log management section and network security platform, logged gives you full transparency. You can manage multiple platforms via a single account and view all the detailed performance on your user dashboard.

4. Nagios:

Nagios is an open source infrastructure monitoring tool that monitors service devices sensors and a lot more. It is more popular in the IT operation community and open-source enthusiast community. Setting up Nagios analytics tool can be a little complex and might not suit for all start-ups. You might need to take help from external consultants to setup and customize Nagios. Once setup, it provides all the information very clearly and organizes it in a proper way. Though it is not the quickest in providing clear alerts, it has a standard in the industry that will definitely reward you for all of the money and time that you have invested in building this monitoring and analytics platform.

5. Manage engine:

Manage engine is owned by Zoho and is a very comprehensive tool for the entire infrastructure. It is used to monitor the moving parts of the entire start-up. Though this platform is slow in terms of customization, the standard they have set for the features they provide are very decent and rich. This analytics tool is simple, powerful yet easy to use. This software is very responsive. You can add personalized fields in the inventory module to keep the important information you need handy. It is easy to setup and provides accurate results.

Conclusion

Data Analytics is not only a need for big enterprises but is also equally important for all kinds of start-ups. From identification of the problem, identifying product-market fit, validating the product, taking the product to the next level and to be able to reach a bigger audience, data analytics helps entrepreneurs and start-ups in taking well-informed decisions. Hence, more and more start-ups are increasingly taking up the idea of using analytics tools and filling up data before they set business goals.