Software Reccomendations for Analyzing Visitor Behavior?

[Davey Crocket]

Can anyone reccomend a software program to monitor and analize web stats for a website? I'm thinking of buying WebCEO and was wondering if there were any better programs out there.

Thanks

[yfs1]

I have always used www.sawmill.net

It is really robust with good customer service so I haven't been tempted to switch.

I also did Beta Testing so it was free

[Crazy_Rob]

Originally Posted by Davey Crocket

Can anyone reccomend a software program to monitor and analize web stats for a website? I'm thinking of buying WebCEO and was wondering if there were any better programs out there.

Thanks

Try a search on this site.

Here's one recent thread-
http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=14474

[webmistress]

The best software on the marker right now is : http://www.clicktracks.com

It's expensive but you get what you pay for!

[Crazy_Rob]

Originally Posted by webmistress

The best software on the marker right now is : http://www.clicktracks.com

It's expensive but you get what you pay for!

I disagree. It doesn't offer anything special. Sure the overlay is a nice feature but it's not worth $600- IMO.

I bought it (the Analyzer version) and used it a just a few times.

Why do you think it's so great? And which version are you referring to?

[webmistress]

Originally Posted by Crazy_Rob

I disagree. It doesn't offer anything special.

It doesn't has to offer anything special.

A log analyzer just does one thing - analyzes your logs. What this software does successfully is not only analyze it but also present the results in a comprehensive graphical manner such that you immeadiately have a quick (and/or in-depth) overview of visitor activity on your site. This is where most other analyzers fail. This is the only log analysis software that has successfully been able to do this at blazing speed too.

Of course, everything is relative in life and online. What works great for you might not work great for others. ClickTracks works very well with small sites especially with mini-sites although it does cover the analytical needs of bigger sites.

I'm also not saying that the price is good, it's expensive i agree but since i don't have any other log analyzer that could present the result in such a way, i won't even say it's overpriced.

I use ClickTracks Analyzer 5.6 and ClickTracks Optimizer (this one rocks) (http://www.clicktracks.com/products/optimizer/index.php)

[Phil Tanny]

Would anyone care to compare clicktracks to Urchin 5, the log analyzer version of Urchin?

[SaN-DeeP]

Originally Posted by Phil Tanny

Would anyone care to compare clicktracks to Urchin 5, the log analyzer version of Urchin?

good question, waiting for a reply.

[Crazy_Rob]

Clicktracks (IMO) is more bloated & less reliable than Urchin.

[nevetS]

Urchin does a good job of monitoring click paths, entrance and exit pages, giving you some decent visitor stats like screen size, javascript support, etc.

I don't know about the campaign modules or anything like that, but urchin does a pretty good job of providing me with all the info I regularly am interested in.

[SaN-DeeP]

Did urchin really helped knowing indepths about your website ? and increase the visibility etc. for your site ?

Can someone list down some basic advantages over awstats ?

Thanks for this healthy discussion.

[nevetS]

Urchin is about 10,000 times faster than awstats and at least from my experience so far... I've had no security issues as a result.

Urchin is more friendly as far as displaying subsets of data quickly - i.e. reviewing stats for a particular day, week, month, or arbitrary date range.

Urchin also provides better information as far as user activity within a site (click paths, # of pages viewed, etc), and has a few really useful reports - like which forms are gettting posted. There's a free demo that you can sign up for for Urchin 6 which I've been told will be released as a product you can buy (versus rent by the month) close to EOY.

[Crazy_Rob]

Urchin gives me just about everything I want. It really is the best for the $.

[Davey Crocket]

$199 per month for Urchin seems like a lot of money especially for small site owners.... if I was raking in $10,000 a month or more the price might seem neglible but i'm not so its high for me.

[asr_guy]

Other tools are:
www.indextools.com
www.hitslink.com

These are hosted and require you to add a bit of code to every page or event you want to track. No processing of log files and it's more real-time this way. They seem to be close competitors so check their sites to see who has the edge. Both offer trials.

Cheers,
Peter