I recently built a website for someone and the web host provides awstats with the owner’s plan. I also created a Google Webmaster account - or whatever it is called now.
Sadly, I am unimpressed with both.
About 8-10 years ago I had my own website with GoDaddy for a brief period, and I recall they had a pretty nice web stats plan that was free. What I liked most about it is that it broke out each visitor and told me their City/State/Country. I found that really helpful as it gave me an idea of where people were coming from.
With AWStats, all I get is a long list of IP addresses which is useless.
I thought AWStats was supposed to be all that, and also everyone has told me that Google is the bomb, but I think they both look like sh*t.
My expectations included…
List of visitors
Visitors location (City/State/Country)
Pages Visited
Time on each Page
Referring Website if applicable (e.g. came from Amazon.com)
Whenever I look at the stats I have now, I don’t know what to do with them or how to let my client know if what I did is working…
Yes. And neither of those things is the same as Google Analytics, which is what Ryan has explained you need if you want analytics information.
(But bear in mind that no system is foolproof. Google Analytics, for example, relies on JS and therefore doesn’t work if JS is disabled - or if visitors have specifically chosen to block GA.)
Hay guys, something I may actually be able to help with.
I have used these people for years ever since 2002. With them you can get a lot of information. On the users alone you can find out what time they came. What page they entered and exited. You can find out the browser they used weather java was on and the path they took through your site.
In grouped reports you can see which pages are most popular and see how many times each was accessed. There are also reports of what percent came from Windows, Mobile, Android etc.
You can also see things like where they were referred from and even see how many people are currently on the site.
The code is cut an paste, you can either create your own custom trackers and name each one accordingly to what you want or past in an auto code that will read the title of the page and report that way.
This has been great to me all of these years. The default puts an icon on your page where the code is placed but you can opt for an invisible icon.
Best of all this service is free. I think it is worth you guys checking out. I figured you all knew something better which is why I did not talk about this earlier.
