Google analytics is too complicated!

[Sweet Tooth #3]

I don't have any trouble with Google Analytics, but setting up Statcounter just confounded me, gave up.

[deepsand]

I hate seeing (keyword not set) every time I want to analyze what keywords people are actually clicking on. Does anyone know a good alternative to GA that offers the ability to track back the keywords?

The only reliable source of such data is the server log.

[vikashony]

Google Analytics (GA) is neither a Google original nor necessarily the best. GA is a sub-set of Urchin, which Google acquired six years ago by buying Urchin Software Corporation.

Urchin is a hybrid, incorporating data gathered via both on-page web tags and server logs; GA uses web tags only.

Google has left many users confused owing to the many changes made to both GA & Urchin, allowing one to use both on the same site, and failing to adequately document either.

Thanks for sharing Urchin word. it’s really new word for me I little read on this but I am confuse why people do not download and use urchin web analytic software and why it’s not popular as GA even both are the products of Google. Do you have personal experience with Urchin? Is there some problem of using this? Do you recommend that it’s much better then GA.

[bobbizman]

I took a look at stat counter and liked it, seems much more simplified than GA. But is there something out there that allows me to see what my visitors are doing on the site? Like where they click, move their mouse, navigate through the site, etc...

[weegillis]

I took a look at stat counter and liked it, seems much more simplified than GA. But is there something out there that allows me to see what my visitors are doing on the site? Like where they click, move their mouse, navigate through the site, etc...

Nothing provides what you want other than user testing (or watching over their shoulder [why] while they attempt to perform a predefined task).

Server logs can be easily analyzed with just a spread sheet and its internal search function. Pick an IP, and search it, then spin off another table and study it. If the dates are fairly close (that is, not more than a week or so in duration) then one can almost assume that the same user is creating those log entries. See when they came in, and from where (another site, or a search engine, and if so, what phrase they were searching). It's all right there. Draw your own conclusions by browsing the pages they did and judge for yourself if they had a good experience or not. Did they return to the site within a short time after their first visit? What pages did they view? Did they view any of your conversion pages (the ones with calls to action)?

A really old program that still works, and may provide as much information as the OP requires, is AXS2 Visitor Tracking System. They will even perform the install, all you have to do is configure it with a couple of details, such as username and password, and a couple of others. Nothing much to set up. You can also set it to not log your own visits so your frequent perusal of the site is not logged (on the AXS system, server logs record everything). Pages need to be tagged, but if you are using a template, then it takes just one edit, or just a few to cover your entire site. If not using a template, then every page you wish to log will need to be tagged.

You can also tag outbound links, including links to internal resources such as media files and PDF's. The control panel is very simple and the reporting very flexible with date range and filter. You can select the type of report, hits on documents, hits from other sites, links followed, track one visitor at a time, track one page at a time, and so on.

PM me if you have any questions that would be better not taken up here in the thread. I have used AXS for many years and find it totally adequate for my needs, but then I've never applied it to a commercial site, only informational.

[monstercoder]

This was the old HitBox Professional. I wish they had this back.



And then you could track each and every page a visitor came out and see the complete path they went from start to end while they were on your site. This is how you can tell if they are real visitors and not those one hit wonders when you pay for a traffic campaign.



And what was cool is that it knew your "normal" daily traffic and could project what you were to expect and show you short-falls. I loved this thing much better than Google Analytics.

[jhannawin]

I'm with the server log people here. When clients ask for stats and reports I always ask 'what decisions are you going to take based upon that information'? I would say 9 times out of 10 the answer is 'none really, just interested that's all'. The problem with GA is that they've constructed a set of reports many of which fall into the 'just interested' category and therefore overwhelm the casual user. So if your analysis is because you are 'interested' then GA is as good as any (there are others, as identified here) but if you want real hard analysis use your server logs and write or have written a set of reports which give you just the info you need.

[monstercoder]

I'm with the server log people here. When clients ask for stats and reports I always ask 'what decisions are you going to take based upon that information'? I would say 9 times out of 10 the answer is 'none really, just interested that's all'. The problem with GA is that they've constructed a set of reports many of which fall into the 'just interested' category and therefore overwhelm the casual user. So if your analysis is because you are 'interested' then GA is as good as any (there are others, as identified here) but if you want real hard analysis use your server logs and write or have written a set of reports which give you just the info you need.

I think you hit the nail right on the head with that one.

One observation could be made would be to look at the one web page that gets the most traffic and try to focus on that single page to get it to convert to sales by putting a really good Call-to-Action on it. As far as just casually looking at the data, I still miss Hitbox. All of the paid Analytics cost almost 8x or more what we were paying before.

Has anyone seen or use Woopra? If you have a low traffic site, these people look like you could have some nice Analytics for about $5/mo. That's pretty reasonable. Look at some of their screen shots here:
http://www.woopra.com/features/

[demandprints]

Analytics is actually great, and visual at the same time, but there are other tools. I like the stats programs in C-Panel, and I also use StatPress for my Wordpress based websites and blogs. There are lots of tools out there, and easily found by searching Google.

[monstercoder]

Analytics is actually great, and visual at the same time, but there are other tools. I like the stats programs in C-Panel, and I also use StatPress for my Wordpress based websites and blogs. There are lots of tools out there, and easily found by searching Google.

It's possible for the the CPanel stats to inflate the visitor count. When a bot or somebody using spidering software crawls your site, it can count that IP as a unique, human visitor. When somebody uses a real browser to visit your site, it loads the JavaScript that calls the analyltics. Google Analytics uses JavaScript to show you a more accurate visitor count. One exception is those who use a Firefox plug-in's such as AdBlock Plus, which can block the tracking. AWStats and such can separate some of the known bots, but many of them may pass as visitors. I wish there was some kind of footprint that could be checked to verify a bot vs a real browser other than using cookies. Some people purposely turn cookies off.