When running a business, it’s important to keep track of what’s working and what needs a rethink so you can stay on top of emerging trends. Like keeping an eye on the forecasts for what could be next, it’s also useful for business owners to refine their processes and tools.

In this blog post, we will cover the best analytics applications to give you better insight into your business. By understanding what provides value for your business, you can focus more on this and reduce unnecessary spending or other inefficient use of your time and materials.

Elevate is a digital performance analysis tool that examines more than 40 data points across 7 metrics, working to evaluate and reveal insights into a company’s digital strategies. These include security, SEO, content and ESG to see how they contribute to a company’s digital strategies.

Hootsuite offers a unique insight into business performance, using an AI specifically designed for use with social media. It allows you to quickly search brand mentions and trending topics, and learn what emotions are driving audience engagement. It stresses the importance of listening to the audience and their needs, so will give rich insight into what posts resound the best.

Google Analytics provides a wealth of in-depth information on your website, allowing you to understand and evaluate the performance of your products, marketing, content and other offerings. You may already be aware that Google uses machine learning to analyse data, which gives it a unique set of insights that would be unavailable elsewhere.

Hotjar is a really interesting tool that offers business owners a different viewpoint on their website. They allow heatmaps, recordings from the eyes of the customer, surveys and feedback from users in order to strengthen the customer relationship. It allows you to uncover extra opportunities for optimisation and prioritise the changes that matter most to your customer experience.

Sprout Social is an all-in-one social media management tool. It boasts the potential to transform every area of your organisation starting with a strong social media strategy. It allows business owners to capture insights with ease, and see value much faster, without months of onboarding as the interface is easy to use.

If you’re looking for more information on how to digitalise your business, get in touch with the Lincoln Be Smarter team today by contacting us at lincolnbesmarter@lincoln.ac.uk. We can offer you guidance and advice on adapting your business to get you up to speed with the most modern technology.