[WEB4LIB] RE: Web Usage Statistics

[Mariner, Vincent]

I'll be presenting "An introduction to web server statistics and using them
in web site redesign" at the LITA National Forum
http://www.lita.org/forum01/index.htm this October in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
If there is any chance you will be attending, please do drop in for the
program.  That said, there are at least a few products both free and of
various prices that may be able to help you.   

What appears to be the most popular of the free products are Analog
http://www.analog.cx/ and Webalizer http://www.mrunix.net/webalizer/.
 
Fee-based products include Webtrends http://www.webtrends.com/products/log/,
Wusage http://www.boutell.com/wusage/, FastStats
http://www.mach5.com/products/analyzer/index.html, LiveStat
http://www.livestat.com/Report, and Accesswatch http://www.accesswatch.com/.


There are many others and I'm sure you will get some good suggestions and
things to watch out for when using web server statistics from members of the
list.  


-----Original Message-----
From: Judith Pearce [mailto:jpearce at nla.gov.au]
Sent: Monday, August 20, 2001 9:32 PM
To: Multiple recipients of list
Subject: [WEB4LIB] Web Usage Statistics


I am interested in finding our more about the status of commercial products
for measuring web site usage statistics.  We have a relatively complex web
site with around 7,000 static pages, a dozen or so service entry points to
information services delivered by in-house and third party applications and
a growing number of digital collection items. Some of these are on a
different physical server (eg the OPAC) or virtual server (eg Picture
Australia). We need a product that can give us:

(1) Number of hits, page impressions, visits, unique visits, etc on a daily
basis for the whole site and for each specific web-based service and
category of digital collection item.   
(2) Ability to break down visits by domain of origin and browser across all
servers and for specific  directories.
(3) Ability to discriminate between staff, reading room and external use
across all servers and for specific directories.
(4) Ability to generate monthly reports for business managers with minimal
intervention and delay after the last day of the month.
(5) Support for "same time last year" trend analysis. 

Our current product vendor claims to be targeting this mid-range to large
market but there seem always to be new problems that prevent us from
establishing a robust and stable production system.  In the meantime the
business owners' expectations are increasing for reliable performance
measures and benchmarks for their web-based services.  

If would be interested in hearing from anyone with a product in production
that is providing a good level of service against requirements like these.  

Judith Pearce
Director, Web Services
National Library of Australia
CANBERRA  ACT  2601
Australia  

Phone:  +61 2 62621425
Fax:  +61 2 6273 3648
Email: jpearce at nla.gov.au
NLA Web Site:  http://www.nla.gov.au