The Importance of Website Stats

March 30, 2011

A while back, I wrote a post on Why Using Google Analytics Is A Bad Idea. Rather than me reiterating what I said in that post, basically if you install Google Analytics code on your site, you are giving Google a back door window into your traffic patterns and they will quickly determine that your (affiliate) site is not the kind of site they want in their index.

Open Source Web Analytics Software

So you have to use an alternative. One alternative I’ve been trying out is Piwik (I’ve no idea what the name means or signifies) – an open source alternative to Google Analytics (open source means that it’s completely free to download and use).

The Piwik Dashboard. Click the image to go to the live Piwik Demo

It’s a PHP script that you install on one of your domains. Installation is pretty straightforward but you may need a bit of technical know-how if installation doesn’t run smoothly.

Once installed, you need to add each of your websites to the dashboard. Piwik will then provide you with a bit of tracking code to add to your site. Once the tracking code is installed, Piwik will start tracking your website stats.

With the software, you can check out who has been visiting your page, when, how, why and from where. You can create Goals and track conversions. You can track an unlimited number of websites, and create users with permission to view or administrate one or several websites (e.g. if you outsource website maintenance).

A few other things about Piwik:

There’s no charge to download or use the software as it’s open source
Your web analytics reports happen in real time. For high traffic websites, you can choose the frequency for reports to be processed.
You own your web analytics data: because Piwik is installed on your server, the data is stored in your own database and you can get all the statistics
It’s got a modern, easy to use User Interface and you can fully customize your dashboard and drag and drop widgets you want to display.
Piwik features are provided by plugins. Most of these are activated by default but you can activate/deactivate whichever ones you like.
The software is actively maintained and new upgrades (free of charge) are released regularly. Upgrading is simple – you just click the upgrade link provided on your dashboard and follow the instructions. If you’ve ever upgraded WordPress through it’s dashboard, upgrading Piwik is similarly simple.

Downsides of Using Piwik

One minor irritation is that you can’t set the number of sites to display on a page. Earlier versions were limited to showing information for 20 sites per page. In the latest release (V1.2.1), they’ve set the limit to 50 sites per page.

A bigger problem revealed itself to me yesterday and today. It’s not a problem with the software itself but with the fact that it’s hosted on one of your own domains (or one of mine in this case). Yesterday, my webhosting plan for some of my domains expired (Piwik was installed on one of them). It’s my own fault for not keeping on top of things. But the upshot is that those sites were offline for several hours before someone contacted me to say they couldn’t access one of my sites.

After I renewed my hosting, there was another delay before the sites cam back online. During all that time, Piwik was offline so the stats for none of my websites were being tracked. Now there’s a gap in the figures that will skew them somewhat for this month.

And today I found that my sites were offline again. This time it was because of server maintenance or because the server capacity was exceeded for some reason (haven’t received clarification on what the actual cause was). Now this is the only time I’ve come across such a problem with this webhost. That’s not to say it hasn’t happened before and that I just didn’t know about it. Again, Piwik wasn’t tracking my sites as a result.

However, both of these “down times” illustrate the potential problem of hosting Piwik on one of your own domains. While webhosts do their best to keep sites up and running, they can’t provide a 100% uptime guarantee. So you’re going to have to assume that if you use Piwik, there’s a small chance that there will be periods where it won’t be able to track your sites.

So What If Piwik Isn’t For You?

If you want the functionality that Google Analytics (or Piwik) provides, then Clicky looks like being a good solution. I’ve heard good things about it and decided to try it out.

It’s not a free service though. While you can use it for free on just one domain, you’ll need to pay for the service if you want to track more than one website.

There are three packages available:

Starter: track 3 sites for $4.99 per month
Pro: track 10 sites for $9.99 per month
Super Pro: track 30 sites for $24.99 per month

If the prices seem high to you, you can save 50% by paying for a year up front.

I decided to give the Pro pack (I paid the $59.99 up front for a year’s service). I’m in the process of adding my top 10 performing sites to see how they are tracked in comparison to Piwik. At some point, I’ll write a post about the comparisons.

Last Word

Google Analytics isn’t the only game in town. Piwik is a very viable alternative that let’s you track as many of your sites as you want. Clicky is a service you pay for that provides better stats than Google but the price you pay depends on the number of sites you want to track. With Piwik, there’s the possibility that due to unforseen down time, it may not track your sites. With a paid service, you’re guaranteed your sites will be tracked 24/7 but that’s one of the things you are paying for.

So, in the end, it all comes down to personal choice – what you can afford and what you can live with.