Slashdot Mirror
Best website statistics package?
goodminton asks: "As the webmaster for a small but growing e-commerce site, I'm becoming increasingly interested in the quality of our site metrics. We currently use a Javascript-based counter that provides good but basic information, however, a recent Slashdot posting has me thinking the stats from our system may not be as accurate as we'd like. What do you think is the best website statistics package, and why?"
I just went through this process for my employer. While I like Google Analytics (and currently use it for my personal web pages), it's a bit more focused on e-commerce than I need - although that may be good for you.
What I decided on was http://awstats.sourceforge.net/. It's got a pretty impressive feature list, and I like the look, and the sheer volume of data it can collect.
One caveat - the current version (6.5) has a command-injection vulnerability when run in cgi mode (as opposed to statically-created pages), so watch where & how you install it.
Poor means hoping the toothache goes away.
Sawmill is an awesome slicer-and-dicer of your web logs. I haven't done web stuff in several years, but the package was awesome five years ago, and it looks like they've been refining the product over the years.
What I decided on was http://awstats.sourceforge.net/. It's got a pretty impressive feature list, and I like the look, and the sheer volume of data it can collect.
As someone who setup awstats for a high-traffic site last year, let me warn you -- beyond the available options, it ain't customizable. At all. The html generation is embedded in bits and pieces throughout their perl code. Some of the nastiest, speghettiest mess I've ever seen. They don't even use stylesheets for proper styling. If it does exactly what you want, then fine. But be forewarned: if your needs ever change, don't expect awstats to change with them.
Democracy is two wolves and a sheep voting on lunch.
I'm a big fan of AWStats (awstats.sourceforge.net).
We got sucked in by the pretty graphs too. Internally, awstats is a mess. Some of the worst code spaghetti I've seen in awhile. As I already said, I'm not optimistic of their ability to improve going forward.
Democracy is two wolves and a sheep voting on lunch.
If you can get invited to analytics it really rocks. Awstats is good, and I have always been fond of webalizer. I run a small hosting company, and I have found that awstats and webalizer can be a bit processor intensive under certain conditions. The nice thing about analytics is that the processing takes place off site. Analytics also has a lot more information geared toward marketing, and the metrics that can help make marketing decisions. Awstats and webalizer and especially webalizer are more about presenting data from the logs.
-MS2k
If you're using PHP, you need to give BBClone a try. Just do an include from your scripts and it's good to go. The stats it generates are quite nice. I also use Webalizer on the server logs.
"It ain't a war against drugs.it's a war against personal freedom" --Bill Hicks
So awstats is not configurable. That's not necessasarily a bad point - nearly everyone wants awstats on their sites, and they're happy with the look of it out of the box. But people should be aware that they cannot change it. 99% of the time, this is an absolute non-issue, it gets installed, works, looks pretty. Job sorted.
For the 1% of people who would like to change it, well, they should be aware that it isn't going to be for them, before they start working with it. Again, this is not that big an issue.
For all the users of awstats, the biggest problem is parse time. Awstats can be a lot slower than other stats packages, which isn't a problem until you start hosting 1000 sites on a server when it suddenly will be an issue. But, again, if you host 1000 sites, awstats just isn't for you and you shoudl check out something else.
Right: simply put awstats behind an
Bye.
about me A - B
I've done web analytics implementations for smaller (i.e. $10M e-commerce sites) and larger (i.e. hundreds of millions PV/month) companies.
I'm not much of a fun of log file based analytics systems. They are simply too much work to maintain from an infrastructure POV and caching wreaks havoc with the accuracy of the stats. I therefore recommend 1x1 transparent pixel based systems. If you insist on log file based systems, NetTracker and WebTrends make some decent products.
Google analytics is a great package for smaller companies. It is free and offers a nice chunk of functionality. Caveat emptor -- you get what you pay for. When I audited my last employers GA e-commerce metrics against actual online sales, there was a substantial (I think ~10% error)! However it is still a good tool for understanding trends and issues w/ your analytics.
Webside Story (HBX) and Omniture rule the high end market. It has been a while since I checked pricing, but I think you can expect to start out at the ~$10-$20K/yr range. Both of these products are excellent.
Webside Story sells a lower end package (Hitbox Professional) that has limited commerce metrics but is also pretty decent and afforable. They have an enterprise system: HBX that is excellent.
Omniture also has am impressive system. I don't think they have much in terms of entry level offerings.
Web trends has a product Web Trends live that is about 1/2 the price of the enterprise products from Webside Story and Omniture. It has been a good 5 years since I've their product, but I wasn't especially impressed with it at the time.
Evolution: love it or leave it