[Web4lib] recommendations for web and catalog "visits" statistics solutions

[Wesley Johnson]

You should check with your website host to see if they offer AW Stats. It's
a great program that gives VERY detailed results. You get the basic visits,
unique hits, how long a person stayed on average on the site, what browser
they use, and a WHOLE bunch of other stuff. It's really neat.

On Wed, Apr 2, 2008 at 7:12 PM, Houghton-Jan, Sarah <
sarah.houghton-jan at sjlibrary.org> wrote:

> Hi all,
>
> I am asking for recommendations on two things:
> 1) software you are using or would recommend to capture accurate user
> visit
> numbers for your library's website
> 2) any method or vendor-provided built-in tool that you are using to
> capture
> accurate user visit numbers for your library's catalog.
>
> I am doing a webcast for Infopeople, a California project for training
> libraries, on April 24th on recommended tools and best practices for
> capturing accurate numbers for the two categories above specifically for
> the
> purpose of having accurate numbers to provide for the Annual Public
> Library
> Survey.  They are adding a new category for statistics this year that
> libraries will be asked to submit: virtual visits.  The definition
> provided
> in the survey is as follows:
>
> Virtual visits include a user's request of the library web site or catalog
> from outside the library building regardless of the number of pages or
> elements viewed.  This statistic is the equivalent of a session for a
> library's website. Exclude virtual visits from within the library, from
> robot or spider crawls and from page reloads.
>
> So, near as I can figure it, the tricky parts to the above definition are
> that they want all those exclusions (the "within the library" is
> particularly difficult for all but the most robust stats systems) and that
> they're looking for catalog "visits" (not # of searches, # of holds, etc.
> which is what the vendor provides us with).  There are a number of kludgey
> ways that one can try to guess the number of visits if the vendor doesn't
> provide that functionality.  Tell me what you've kludged!
>
> But the biggest problem, and the wording of the definition here is key, is
> that they want "a user's request of the library web site or
> catalog...regardless of the number of pages or elements viewed."  Does
> this
> mean that if a user starts in the website, moves into the catalog, then
> leaves, that it should count as one visit?  I don't think there's a way to
> do that since they are on two different servers, two different systems,
> two
> different databases (correct me if I'm wrong).
>
> Any insight or recommendations you can offer are much appreciated.
>
> Thanks!
> Sarah Houghton-Jan
> Digital Futures Manager, San Jose Public Library
> Author of LibrarianInBlack.net
>
>
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