Thoughts on Visitor Tracking

[inhouseninja]

Our SEO is interested in using Visitor tracking software/service called Visitor Track from http://www.netfactor.com/.

I have heard of these type things but what exactly do they offer that we can't do ourselves in Analytics? I can figure out the company someone came from by referral traffic/segments etc so how exactly would this company get a person's email without asking for it? This seems fishy to me and does it affect SEO negatively?

Anyone how has used  services like Visitor Track or similar services that claim to be caller ID for your website?

Trying to get evidence pro or con to submit to CEO.

[TourdeForce]

Hello, we've used Visitor Track for the last several years. It does not tell you who specifically was on your website, only the companies that have been on your site. I believe it identifies the IP address and then links that to the company name, so it only works if they're accessing your site from their corporate network.

It will also provide you links to contacts at the company, but again, this doesn't tell you the actual person who visited your site.  They get the contact details from ZoomInfo - so if there aren't any contacts from the company listed on ZoomInfo, there won't be any contact details.

If you are a B2B company like we are, it is useful to know which companies have visited your site, but it is kind of difficult to act on that data. You can't really have your sales team call a prospect and say "hey, someone from your company was on our website...do you know who it was so I can talk to them?"

I am actually researching alternatives to Visitor Track right now. Like I said, it is valuable info, but I don't know if it's worth what we're paying for it.

Let me know if you have any other questions, I'd be more than happy to answer them!

[inhouseninja]

Ashley, thank you so much for the help. Your answer is similar to what my instincts told me as I thought they were over promising. So how is the info different or better than what you'd get from say Google Analytics?

What alternatives have you found?

[TourdeForce]

I would say it's just different than Google Analytics. GA (as you know) allows you to really analyze your data, identify trends, etc. Visitor Track pretty much gives you a list of who visited your site, the keywords they used, which pages they viewed, etc. It has some reporting capabilities, but nothing like what GA has.

Visitor Track is almost more of a sales tool, so you can see which companies are visiting your site. Then you can try to go after that business (but again, you have no idea who at the company was on your site - it could be an intern or it could be the CEO).

I've really just started looking at alternatives. Marketo has some really neat tools, but they're part of a larger lead management suite.

Here are some others - I haven't looked in depth at any of these yet, so let me know if you find anything out!

http://seorchers.com/track-website-visitors/

http://www.visistat.com/