We previously talked about understanding goals before worrying about web statistics. Let’s talk about another bit of infrastructure before we dive into numbers next week. If you’re going to record statistics for your website or blog, you’ll need some sort of software. All web servers record basic information about who is visiting your site such as their IP address and web browser, but to track more interesting information you’ll need some sort of advanced stats software. There are quite a few players in the market but today we’ll look at a few of the most popular.
Google Analytics is the most popular free statistics package. You’ll install a bit of javascript into your website (there are plugins for popular systems such as WordPress), and Google will start tracking all sorts of information about who is visiting your site, which pages they’re visiting, how they got there, and how long they’re hanging around. The upside to Google Analytics is that it’s free and offers a lot of information, the downside is that it can require some customization to find the useful information on their dashboard and it can’t be extended.
Woopra is a relatively new player in the game, offering real-time web tracking and analysis. Woopra offers a very rich visual experience to see your web traffic by using a desktop client that runs on your computer (Windows, Mac, or Linux). There’s also a more basic view available on the Woopra website. Like Google Analytics, Woopra is free, and is tightly integrated with WordPress. Woopra looks great, but my observations have been that they’re still working out some bugs in their relatively new product.
My statistics program of choice for this site and my Portland event photography site is Mint. Unlike Google Analytics and Woopra, Mint is commercial software that costs $30 per site. Mint is focused on offering stats with a “what’s happening recently” focus, and slicing and dicing your visitor data in any number of ways. The best part about Mint is that it has an active developer community in which anyone can write new modules (called “Pepper”) which add new functionality to the system. The core Mint software tracks the basics, but the various Pepper can track things like bounce rate, trends over time, and offer graphical displays instead of Mint’s default table-based data presentation. The only downsides to Mint are that it’s not as widely integrated with other systems as Google Analytics, and that it’s not free (although if you’re serious about your website or blog, a one-time $30 fee is hardly a big expense).
Our next look at stats will start by looking at some of the basic numbers that should matter to a photographer who is publishing on the web.
Photo by kevinzhengli, used under Creative Commons licensing
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