Website Statistics - Part 2

On Stats page 1 we looked at a comparison of the basic free web analytics that are normally provided, and a quick guide to using them and what you need to be looking for.

Do you need a better solution, with a better analysis of your website metrics? First of all, you don’t need anything better than these basic free packages if your site is less than three months old, or if you don’t run a business online or worry about visitors, or if you really don’t care about where your traffic comes from or goes to; and, perhaps, if you have less than 50 visitors a day. Otherwise, you would probably benefit from more specific and better-targeted information.

You can pay a lot of money for pro web statistics packages, and of course if your turnover justifies it, they will not only pay for themselves but also make you money into the bargain. For instance, wouldn’t it be useful to know what your best referring advertising sites are, what pages visitors from them land on precisely, where they go from there, and what they buy (or don’t)? And conversely of course, which are the worst referring sites - so you can exclude them from your PPC deal. This alone would pay for a pricey stats package without any other benefit.

PPC tuning

In order to tune your organic search traffic, your PPC (online advertising) traffic, your website operation, your sales funnel, or any other commercial website function at all - and not forgetting the removal of onsite errors, of course - you need much better answers than the free web stats applications will give you. Their numbers are sometimes wrong; they're too far behind if you want to see today's figures; they can't supply click-trail data; they are weak on referrers and landing page data; and as for site error repairs, they don't figure too well at all.

However, there is at least one free answer that many people use: combine them, or another free app or two. Combining any of the Big 3 doesn't work too well; but vast numbers of websites use a combination of AWstats and Google Analytics to get their answers. This has several advantages, apart from the fact it's free: the Google stats are accurate and can be compared to the AWstats figures; AWstats is easy to interpret and gives you a one-page digest of the important basic numbers; and GA majors on the pageview / clickthrough numbers you need for PPC tuning.

This solution, as stated, is more than enough for huge numbers of sites on the Net - probably many millions. There are some disadvantages of course: Mr G knows all your figures down to the last decimal place; GA is not designed for tuning organic search; error resolution is not addressed; and so on. As a free solution, it's very good; but in this life, normally you only get what you pay for. You are still paying of course, by giving all your data to a third party: that's their fee for the deal.

Suitable web analytics software

Are we biased? You bet - Michael at Logaholic pays us of course, since we are affiliates. However, we installed Logaholic before we got the affiliate deal, so in the end it doesn’t matter.

We like Logaholic standard server version because it’s straightforward to install and tells us everything we need to know, for any site up to about 20,000 visitors per day. Over that number, it is best to use Logaholic Live, the hosted version. There is also a multi-user option for site hosts, Logaholic SPE. In addition there is a Desktop version, for use with downloaded log files.

We suggest you go on over there and (1) check out the price - it’s not a misprint by the way; and (2), get a free trial. Logaholic 2.0 was released on Jan 1st '08, and the price is now $67. Try it now:

    Free trial download:    >> Logaholic Web Analytics <<

 
    Buy now @ $67: >> Buy Logaholic <<     More information: >> Logaholic info <<

Things to like about Logaholic

Some things Logaholic does very well indeed. These are:

• Perfect visits / keyword / referrer analysis
• The best error location of any popular stats app
• In many peoples' opinion, better tuning of PPC than Google Analytics provides
• Near real-time data processing
  
  

Server log processing

Most web analytics apps use the server logs. They re-process these into a new data sub-set at regular times such as after midnight, daily. These times are pre-set and are difficult to vary; in any case there are few websites that have hourly log processing.

Logaholic, though, can process the logs at any time on command. It does not need the finished and re-processed server logs that other stats apps have to use. You can hit the 'Update' button at any time, and the data is immediately processed right up to that moment; and this means you can get get almost real-time clickstream data if you wanted it.

Error location

One of Logaholic's strong points is the way you can pin down site errors precisely. Logaholic will show you both the page that the error originated from, and the faulty page requested, so you can nail it. We have found that Logaholic is the best tool for resolving errors.

If you have multiple 302 errors reported, for instance, but can't seem to locate them in AWstats, then you need a better analysis tool. Resolving 302 errors is vital for any SEO project, as the search engines will penalise you for them (and we can show you proof of this). It is a major sin now, since this is a common SE spamming and pagejacking method.

Spider data

You can get more data on the search bots in your site than with other tools. The full list of all bots is given, and if your site is popular that will run to 50 or more different ones. Logaholic tells you who they are, where they come from, and what they looked at. This information is very useful if you're interested in traffic improvement.

PPC tuning: best sites, worst sites, fraud prevention

Do you have a PPC fraud prevention policy? Chances are you don't. In any case, if you're just using Webalizer / AWstats and Google Analytics, this wouldn't be possible anyway - you don't have enough ways of analysing the data to get a handle on it. In fact, experienced users of GA say it does not give you sufficient tools to do this; therefore if you are using GA and AWstats, you cannot control click fraud effectively.

But Logaholic gives you the tools to nail any fraud rapidly. You can eliminate it and that's that. Apart from that, Logaholic clearly shows your best converting referrers, and also your worst converting referrer sites. The worst ones can be deleted from your PPC deal, so immediately you are quids-in. Chances are, you've saved the cost of the stats app straightaway.

Aside from that, you don't have all the hassle of Javascripting every single page - and you own the data, not Google. With GA, they also of course know all the details of all your traffic from every other source; and you may well feel that to be a step too far.

The best website statistics application?

Probably not - you can get a better solution if you pay thousands for a custom application. However, the value for money you get from Logaholic is most likely unbeatable; there is nothing else you need for organic search tuning; it compares favourably with GA; it is a fine tool for error removal; and it's easy to interpret the data. With over 20,000 visitors per day, there are better solutions such as Logaholic Live, the hosted version. However, you will still need full error resolution, and need to ensure that your chosen web analytics app will deliver on this.

Reading error logs is a very poor solution here - that data needs organising and presenting efficiently. Trying to resolve website errors like this is equivalent to reading the access logs and thinking you have a web analytics solution - the analysis and presentation is the important part, raw data isn't much use.

We think Logaholic is the best website statistics program under $2,000. Be sure to tell us if you don't agree with everything on this page - but we don’t expect to hear from you anytime soon, except with some thanks. Call us if you need any advice on installing or using Logaholic. Or, ask in the forum.

Read our guide to installing and using Logaholic - see the Website Statistics menu at the top of the right column.