Web analytics software

Web analytics software is a form of analytical software that comprises applications and system features that provide website analysis. This analysis covers parameters including visits, pages viewed, visit time, first page/last page accessed, visitor tracking, country of origin, hardware configurations, key word and search engines, and browser analysis.

There are two types of web analytics software. The initial offerings, such as early versions of WebTrends, were based on analysing the HTTP log files of the relevant web server, i.e. the log which is automatically updated by the web server everytime a page or hit is displayed. Unfortunately relatively little information about the user is collected in this log, which meant that it was not possible to learn much about the type of user. More recent products require the insertion of reporting code into each page of the site, and this code can be required to record additional items about the user, page or element. More sophisticated reporting is then possible.

Recent analytics suppliers will host your stats log as well as providing reporting functionality.

Leading analytics suppliers include Nedstat, Omniture, SageMetrics, and WebTrends. Google is a recent entrant to this market. Google analytics is free, and reasonably sophisticated, but Google then does reserve the right to utilise your stats.