Log Analyzer

If you don't analyze the log, you'll never know if you are making money or not.

1.reviews for Awsats

Price: free
Pros:
AWStats is a well developed log analyzer. This can show you many different kinds of stats, unique visitors, viewed pages, screen sizes, and you name it.

AWStats is also very configurable log analyzer. I have English and Japanese version of web pages. Both versions' activities are logged in one file, but awstats can analyze those activities separately.

AWStats runs on the server as CGI script. Once you schedule the updating task, it will run automatically. Just visit where you install AWStats and check already analyzed stats.

Cons:
You cannot use AWStats for marketing analysts. AWStats doesn't show you click trails. (It only shows you stats of entry and exit pages.) You won't be able to know if a particular traffic source or ad campaign is profitable or not.

Installation of AWStats is far more difficult than double clicking on an icon. AWStats is written in Perl, and no installer is available.

There is no Graphical User Interface for configuring AWStats. You have to open configure file in a text editor and type the commands manually. If you mistype, AWStats won't work.

No support is available. User manual and online forum are the only help you will get. Furthermore, you need some technical knowledge to comprehend the user manual.


2.reviews for ClickTracks

price:
$495 for software
$49/month for hosted version

pros:

ClickTracks is one of few log analyzer which can show you click trails, so you will be able to find out which marketing effort made profits.

One unique thing about this analyzer is "Visitor Labeling." ClickTracks can show you the stats which only includes the labeled visitors. If you label visitors who bought your products, you will see how buyers (not all visitors) browsed on your site, such as where they were come from, and what page they saw. You can label any group of visitors, so this feature can be used many different ways.

Moreover, ClickTracks downloads your pages and displays what percent of visitors clicked on a particular link next to each link on the page. Even though several links point to the same page, ClickTracks can differentiate the links. (You need to ad different query string, page1.html?abc, to the links.)

ClickTracks is also configurable log analyzer. Like awstats, ClickTracks can show the stats of English and Japanese version of stats separately, even though those activities are logged in one file.

ClickTracks has built in unzipping utility. (Supported formats are tar, gz, and zip.) Once you tell ClickTracks where the file is, ClickTracks downloads the file, unzip it, and then analyzes the log automatically.

cons:

If you buy software version, every time you want to update the stats, you have to download log file from the server. If you live in where broad band internet connection isn't available, downloading log file may be a pain in your neck.

If you sign up for hosted version, you have to insert a few lines of JavaScript on EVERY page of your Website. And, the JavaScript may increase your web pages' loading time.

You cannot delete part of stats, i.e. deleting stats before March 31 and keeping stats from April 1 to today. (You can delete entire stats, though.) If you don't delete the stats, the database grows as you analyze new log file. But, considering capacity of today's PC's hard drive, growing size of database might not be a problem. This won't be a problem if you sign up for hosted version. They take care of growing database.