Webtrends - Reporting Site Usage and Other Stats?

gammoth asks: "My company has a successful web site which gets roughly 1,800,000 hits from 45,000 sessions a day. A few years ago, our web stats software, HitList, broke when we crossed it's capacity threshold (~1,000,000 hits). I replaced it with a tailored version of Webalizer supported by an array of perl scripts and a Suitespot server plugin. My reporting system runs with little intervention, managing log files from 4 hosts, and competently reports on hits, popular pages, referrers, etc. But it's not perfect and I'm the first to admit it doesn't provide the kind of info the marketing department would find really useful. I have plans of a comprehensive system using a DB and a report engine, but I've not had the time to implement it. (We're interested in info on marketing campaign success, path through site, etc). Meanwhile, marketing is tired of waiting and the otherwise exceptionally supportive IT management (truly) is considering contracting out some of our site usage reporting. Webtrends is being looked at seriously. I was wondering if any readers out there had had any experience with Webtrends or other software package or service provider. Are there any OS packages that provide features well beyond Webalizer?"

NOT meaningless

[legLess]

I've read that document before, and I suggest that perhaps you need to re-read it with a more jaundiced eye towards your prejudices.

The document now contains several disclaimers admitting that the author's original conclusions have been undermined somewhat by his own hyperbole, ignorance and by new technology (the original was written in 1995 - in web terms, it may as well be written in hieroglyphics on decaying papyrus)(ok, so that's a little exageration of my own... :P ). It's still worth reading, but only after you filter it a little.

In particular, he doesn't account for cookies, which are great for web tracking (personally, I block nearly all cookies, but I don't think that session tracking is a malicious use). Cookies can give you very accurate data on visitor use, and proper reporting can turn that into very useful information.

Also, the points he (or she) and you make about IP addresses vs. sessions vs. users are valid, but overblown. Very few people access the same site from different IP address in a given session. You wouldn't want to bet your life savings on these numbers, but they're accurate over 90% of the time, and that's more than enough to get good information (as someone else once said, "Don't believe me? Next time you have a blood test, tell them to take it all to make sure they get an accurate reading.").

We've used WebTrends for month, and I like them quite a lot. For some things they are excellent; for others, not so. A word about methodology: WebTrends tracking code consists of a primary method and a fallback. The primary method uses JavaScript to compute a compressed string of data including much client information and appends this to an HTML image tag - this data is slurped into a database at WebTrends. If JavaScript is disabled, the hit still gets recorded, but without all the fancy extra info. They try to place a unique, persistent cookie with each image load (once per page).

According to WebTrends, over 95% of our visitors have both cookies and JavaScript enabled.

Their reporting tools are very good and comprehensive, containing everything I've seen from the best log analysis software and some things that software can't get (average screen resolution and window size, for instance - I love this). You can customize content groups to your heart's content by modifying some variables in their JS. Their site itself is well made and smart: their help system pops up a content-sensitive window with information for each specific page; if you click to a new page, the help window is updated. Yes, this is relatively easy to implement, but how many sites do it? Too few.

Now, not all is Madam George and roses (to coin a phrase). I've found that WebTrends reports at best 95% of our traffic. Periodically I run a couple home-brew Perl scripts on our logs and it always counts more hits than WebTrends shows (not an issue with my Perl-fu, BTW). Their tech support is decent, but not wonderful - if you have a real issue, you might run around a little. A couple times they've flat-out dropped large chunks of our traffic (e.g. 40% for a day), never to be seen again.

Finally, we get about 10% the traffic the original poster does, so I can't tell you how well they scale. They'll charge a pretty penny for that amount of traffic, too.

To summarize (whew): (a) WebTrends is pretty decent, and excellent for some things; (b) IP-based assumptions and cookie tracking can get you very accurate statistics as long as you can live with the limitations.