Gaps in my orders and how to investigate marketing info

mryang · #1 (**permalink**) 10-13-2006, 11:07 AM

Hi,

I run the website www.dvd-and-media.com we have reasonable pageranks and a good number of visitors. This normally produces a regular stream of orders across the day, i.e. from say 6am through to about 1am - obviously I dont get many orders in the early hours.

However I have a problem, sometimes without any explaination the orders completely stop for like 4 hours in the middle of a day... I cannot find a reason for this and the site is not down so its just strange.

I am looking for a piece of software that will allow me to track my visitors through my site. I want to be able to see reports hour by hour (not day by day as I do now) - at the moment I use AWstats and Webalizer but they only give me daily averages so on these days where there are these "unexplained gaps" I cant see if there is a sudden downturn in traffic at those specific times.... Does anyone know of a piece of software that will let me have this detailed reporting so I can once a problem has occurred go to the software and see if there has been a change in the numbers of people hitting my site.

It would also be of use if I could see if during those times there were more error pages generated or if people orders were failing at a specific point.

Hope someone can help me please.

Simon

priyo · #2 (**permalink**) 10-13-2006, 12:33 PM

you can try Logaholic.

dburdon · #3 (**permalink**) 10-13-2006, 12:59 PM

Simon,

try Statcounter.

enchantedneedle · #4 (**permalink**) 10-13-2006, 05:48 PM

Try Analog. www.analog.cx/ It's free and will give you an hourly traffic summary.

vivecapark · #5 (**permalink**) 10-13-2006, 06:02 PM

I use Sitemeter. They have a free version, but I get more information with the upgraded version.

Viveca
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wpriley · #6 (**permalink**) 10-13-2006, 09:43 PM

My favorite stat package (which I use on my key sites) is IndexTools (http://www.indextools.com/) but it can be fairly expensive (from $20 to $300 per month for the enterprise version which I use).

For a cheaper solution I use Visitor Stats 2 (http://www.visitor-stats.com/) which runs on your server (requires PHP and MySQL) and is an $80 one-time purchase. It seems to meet all your needs. It tracks unique visitors by the hour, shows you how many visitors are on your site right now, and allows you to track current or past visitors' path through your site page-by-page showing their duration on each page (assuming you've placed the tracking code snippet on every page). It has a variety of other good features as well (I particularly like the ability to track pages by custom groups I designate).

It can be installed in less than five minutes and the code, in my experience, is stable and bug free. On the minus side, the developer hasn't released an upgrade in well over a year.

Good luck.

AjiNIMC · #7 (**permalink**) 10-13-2006, 10:11 PM

I just google analytics, it is free that doesnt mean useless.

It really helped me understand the visitor pattern, certainly it has flaws, I liked visitlabs click path and I miss it with google.

Is your data based on a fair enough sample? With web, different time generally means different geo traffic and different needs, so you certianly need such analysis.

khurramali · #8 (**permalink**) 10-13-2006, 11:51 PM

you can also setup Google Analytics so that it tracks users around your website.

from which page they entered and which page they left.

It is a US $ 400 Product given to you for free with thanks from Google.

perpetuum-mobile · #9 (**permalink**) 10-14-2006, 02:59 AM

You mentioned using Webalizer. Version 2.01 has hourly reporting capability.

khurramali · #10 (**permalink**) 10-14-2006, 03:12 AM

AWstats is a better program then Webalizer.

edhan · #11 (**permalink**) 10-14-2006, 03:41 AM

I am using pphlogger that tracks every entry to the website whether from search engines, emails, links or type in. It gives you a good idea where visitors come from and how long they stay as well as which page(s) they go to in your site.

nametaginc · #12 (**permalink**) 10-16-2006, 11:56 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by dburdon

Simon,

try Statcounter.

I use Statcounter as well and it works great.

It provides a wealth of information: visitor paths, time spent on each page, most popular keywords, etc. -- all in real time.

Could be fairly time consuming to fully implement since you have to add its coding to every page that you would like analyzed; however, it is still a great free service.

Definitely worth a try.

lunartcorp · #13 (**permalink**) 10-16-2006, 02:01 PM

I use statcounter. It is free and produces pretty good reports. It also contains graphics that allows you to track the information better.

Altough it does not show you statistics by time, it does tell you the exact time a person hit your website, so you can produce your own statistics with it.

I can see now how my website is being visited from different places of the world and the time it is happening. My website jumped from PR0 to PR3 in a matter or days and my position for "Hand Painted Clothing" searching words got higher. Probably you got a niche at the other side of the globe with a different hourly time.