On Tuesday, January 31, 2006 8:54 AM [EDT], Jo Riley <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> So in that sense, > If I want to improve a website, in terms of content and functionality > and hope to get increased traffic from this change, analysing the > page requests from month to month is sufficient enough to know that > the website is 'performing better' Analog can tell you if you're getting increased traffic. If you make specific changes, Analog can help you see whether those changes are having the desired effect. Analogs greatest asset is it's flexibility - it's very easy to "drill down" by tweaking the commands that you give Analog. Because it's so fast, rerunning the analysis with different parameters is easy, so, for example, if you've changed your home page, you can easily do a report to look at pages that have your home page as the referrer (pages that were visited directly from your home page). If your analysis of the whole log shows a spike of traffic to a particular page, you can do a report on just that page, and see if that traffic is coming from a particular referrer, or because of a "hot" search term, or because of a broken link somewhere that's sending 2 or 3 links to a single page instead of 3 different pages. But Analog won't answer these questions unless you ask them. The "art" of using Analog effectively is in understanding what you expect to see, and in recognizing when anomalies are important. Aengus > > -----Original Message----- > From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Behalf Of Aengus > Sent: 31 January 2006 13:38 > To: Support for analog web log analyzer > Subject: Re: [analog-help] Referring Site Report,and reporting only > ondirectories/pages > > > On Tuesday, January 31, 2006 6:08 AM [EDT], > Jo Riley <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > >> Hello everyone including Nigel, >> >> Is it possible to tailor the reports in Analog such that you are >> given statistics for: >> - unique visitors > > If you give your visitors persistent cookies, then you can count the > number > of cookies you handed out. Throw in a fudge factor for the users who > regular > disable or discard cookies, or who regularly use multiple browsers on > one > machine, or use multiple machines, and you've got a metric for "unique > visitors". Of course, as http://analog.cx/docs/webworks.html > explains, if > you need a fudge factor, then you're in the realm of guesswork and > handwaving anyway, and you're only kidding yourself if you insist on > believing the numbers. (Obviously a site with 10,000 "visitors" > measured > this way is significantly "busier" than a site with only 2,000 > visitors. But > a site with only 5,000 visitors might actually be busier that a site > with 6,000 visitors, depending on the type of visitors, and whether > they are more > or less likely to ply with they cookies. > >> - how long each unique visit is > > In these days of tabbed browsers, that's an even less meaningful > metric - I > often has 5 or 6 pages from a site open at the same time, that I only > read > later. If I open 1 page for your site, and spend 5 minutes reading > it, is my "visit" longer or shorter than if I click through 4 pages > in 2 minutes, and > then close the page because it doesn't have what I want? > > (And don't get me started on the servers who "fix" the problem of > people who > don't keep cookies by putting the session information into the URL, > so that > you can't bookmark a page, or e-mail a URL to someone else, because > the > session key has expired!) > > Aengus > > > +------------------------------------------------------------------------ >> TO UNSUBSCRIBE from this list: >> http://lists.meer.net/mailman/listinfo/analog-help >> >> Analog Documentation: http://analog.cx/docs/Readme.html >> List archives: http://www.analog.cx/docs/mailing.html#listarchives >> Usenet version: news://news.gmane.org/gmane.comp.web.analog.general > +------------------------------------------------------------------------ > > +------------------------------------------------------------------------ >> TO UNSUBSCRIBE from this list: >> http://lists.meer.net/mailman/listinfo/analog-help >> >> Analog Documentation: http://analog.cx/docs/Readme.html >> List archives: http://www.analog.cx/docs/mailing.html#listarchives >> Usenet version: news://news.gmane.org/gmane.comp.web.analog.general > +------------------------------------------------------------------------ +------------------------------------------------------------------------ | TO UNSUBSCRIBE from this list: | http://lists.meer.net/mailman/listinfo/analog-help | | Analog Documentation: http://analog.cx/docs/Readme.html | List archives: http://www.analog.cx/docs/mailing.html#listarchives | Usenet version: news://news.gmane.org/gmane.comp.web.analog.general +------------------------------------------------------------------------
