Which stats package would you recommend?

This has been an ongoing quest for me for a long time - to find a stats solution that fits my needs. I have found a couple that work for me, but they have become extremely expensive. Here's what I am after...

I need something that will support 1 million page views per month. The services that charge based on pageviews seem very expensive in this case.

I would like to have a solution I can use on a number of different sites (less than 10).

I want a solution that shows referrer domains and URLs as two options.

I want a solution that does not cut off the URL of referring sites that use dynamic URLs, like www.site.com/links.php?128372. A LOT of stats packages will cut off the ?128372 part of the URL. Therefore, you cannot go to it.

I want a solution that shows the number of visitors each search engine sends.

I want a solution that shows the search phases visitors use when coming from search engines on a per search engine basis. I have noticed that some packages group them together, which I find very useless.

I don't want to have to download log files.

What do you all think?

 

That's gonna be tough - IMO.

What do you consider 'expensive'?

 

I consider the nearly $200 per month I am paying now expensive for these sites. Note: this does not include any of my software sites. Those are on a Windows dedicated server, and I use WebLog Expert on the server there that generates reports every so many minutes I can access from the web. The best solution, I think, would be some software I can put on my windows server, insert some tracking code into the sites, and then access the stats data from a URL on one of the dedicated server sites. With this option, there would be only the one time fee, which I think would work out great in the long run.

 

Have you ever looked into Google Analytics. They just upped their limit from 5 sites to 10 sites and they seem to fit your requirements unless I am missing something.

 

Price aside, does your current provider meet the technical specifications?

 

Yes, I have. It did not meet the requirements.

 

Yes, it does meet all the requirements, except that it is based on pageview, and since my pageview keep increasing, my cost is going to skyrocket soon at the next jump. Plus, it has some quirks.

 

Does anyone know of any good white label solutions?

 

MysticMedia:

What is missing from Google Analytics?
And the quirks in your current provider?

MattUK:

I believe Indextools is heavily into white label. I have seen a number of "providers", who are really indextools based. Naturally, the end price ends up being higher than buying directly.

 

Indextools is the one we're using at the moment, just wondering if there were any viable alternatives

 

Honestly, I do not remember 100%, but I think the biggest thing was that it did not separate the search engine key phrases per engine, if I remember correctly.

As for the current provider, their main page you go to login has a flash animation on it that makes the page load embarrassingly slow. Also, when you select an option from the navigation on the left, that category closes, and you have to reopen it if you want to select the option right below it, for example. There may be one or two other small issues, but those are the two that jump into mind. They are not so major...just quirks that I could live without, for sure.

 

MysticMedia:

Thanks for the info. Do you need the search phrases by volume and day?

MattUK:

indextools is just about the only one I recall doing private label with any kind of market presence. "viable": are you seeing scalability problems? or is it a pricing thing?

 

By volume do you mean being able to see the data for a certain period? If so, yes. Ideally, it should be able to display data at least by day, week, and month.

 

No neither is a problem, I just want to make sure we have the best available solution before we get heavily into it and pitch it to our clients.

 

MattUK:

My very favourite test on web analytics demo sites: pick a report that will be difficult for the server to generate the data, click and see if the server is slow. I have seen situations where the report just times out completeley.

MysticMedia:

I guess I'll be adding the code to break out values by day.

 

I didn't even notice your signature until I read your latest post. That is, I did not realize you offered a stats solution. Anyway, I visited your site, and unfortunately, your prices are more than I pay now...

 

MysticMedia:

S'all right, the pricing page is on hold until I work through the pricing spreadsheet that I have gathered. I would have trouble meeting your pricing targets, so I never mentioned it.

On another note, your request for segregation of search terms by date and volume was the final push forcing the implementation. So, thanks for that! It's much better than the old way which lumped everything together for all periods.

If anything changes on the pricing side, I'll be sure to make some noises about it.

In the meantime, what did you think overall?

 

Ah, gotcha.

Glad I could help.

Put up a live demo, and I will give you my full feedback.

 

MysticMedia,

A slightly out of date demo is at:

http://try.clickbench.com

The client side works the same as the current version, but the data has been rendered "static".

 

Aha. Here's some feedback for you...

Make the referrer links clickable.

Have a report also for referrer domains.

Make it easy to switch data between dates (that mixed in with what I have already mentioned).

The search phrase data does not seem to be separated by which engine it came from. That is a definite need.

Those are my initial thoughts. Hope it helps. Good luck.