Hi there

I was interested in your comment about Nettracker 'being unique'. Can you expand a little on what you mean by this please?

On 16:22:00 5 October 2005 jbovard wrote:

Nettracker is a very good product but it is unique. have you made 100% sure it does what you need it to first?

They have a full demo downloadable. I suggest you check it out locally

On 12:38:40 4 October 2005 Markd wrote:

Thought I would give an update to those who may be interested. Contacted Sane who in turn put me in touch with one of their UK resellers. After extended discussions, they said they couldn't provide the 'on demand' service we are interested in and said we would have to contact Sane in the US direct for this.

Got in touch with them 2 days ago - still waiting for a response!

I always think the standard of response and customer service following an initial enquiry is a good benchmark for the level of care and support offered in the future.

Hmmm....

On 09:39:57 26 September 2005 craigsullivan wrote:

Well,

I would try netracker (www.sane.com) as you'll get accuracy of visitor numbers as well as multiple visit recognition.  A good example of multi visit recognition is where someone arrives from an offer, views several products a week later and almost a month later, purchases the product.  How many people honestly associate the purchase with the initial offer - not many....

Regards,

Craig.

On 12:15:27 19 September 2005 Markd wrote:

Thanks for the help so far.

Jon - at the moment we are not using WebTrends at all, we are using HitsLink. Yes, we were looking at Webtrends On Demand product - it looks good but is very expensive.

Cookies are used - as far as I know they are session based. Do you know if the products you mention would solve the specific issue we have of measuring 'uniques', 'new' and 'repeat' visitors? A recommendation which addresses this issue would be very useful - obviously I will check them out.

Thanks again.

On 12:04:41 19 September 2005 jbovard wrote:

Hi

What version of WebTrends are you using? You need to be very specific in terms of the product version.

Also, are you sure you are using Webtrends tagging based solution? Webtrends LIVE was superseded by Wetrends on demand.

Are you using Cookies to identify users? If so are they permanent or session cookies?

I agree that there are better alternatives to Webtrends at the lower end of the market. I recommend you look at Urchin by Google or HBX by WebSidestory.

Jon

Craigsullivan,

Who was the reseller you contacted in the UK ?
I'd be keen to find out.
And yes,I'd be keen to find out what you mean by unique.

On 16:32:36 5 October 2005 Markd wrote:

Hi there

I was interested in your comment about Nettracker 'being unique'. Can you expand a little on what you mean by this please?

On 16:22:00 5 October 2005 jbovard wrote:

Nettracker is a very good product but it is unique. have you made 100% sure it does what you need it to first?

They have a full demo downloadable. I suggest you check it out locally

On 12:38:40 4 October 2005 Markd wrote:

Thought I would give an update to those who may be interested. Contacted Sane who in turn put me in touch with one of their UK resellers. After extended discussions, they said they couldn't provide the 'on demand' service we are interested in and said we would have to contact Sane in the US direct for this.

Got in touch with them 2 days ago - still waiting for a response!

I always think the standard of response and customer service following an initial enquiry is a good benchmark for the level of care and support offered in the future.

Hmmm....

On 09:39:57 26 September 2005 craigsullivan wrote:

Well,

I would try netracker (www.sane.com) as you'll get accuracy of visitor numbers as well as multiple visit recognition.  A good example of multi visit recognition is where someone arrives from an offer, views several products a week later and almost a month later, purchases the product.  How many people honestly associate the purchase with the initial offer - not many....

Regards,

Craig.

On 12:15:27 19 September 2005 Markd wrote:

Thanks for the help so far.

Jon - at the moment we are not using WebTrends at all, we are using HitsLink. Yes, we were looking at Webtrends On Demand product - it looks good but is very expensive.

Cookies are used - as far as I know they are session based. Do you know if the products you mention would solve the specific issue we have of measuring 'uniques', 'new' and 'repeat' visitors? A recommendation which addresses this issue would be very useful - obviously I will check them out.

Thanks again.

On 12:04:41 19 September 2005 jbovard wrote:

Hi

What version of WebTrends are you using? You need to be very specific in terms of the product version.

Also, are you sure you are using Webtrends tagging based solution? Webtrends LIVE was superseded by Wetrends on demand.

Are you using Cookies to identify users? If so are they permanent or session cookies?

I agree that there are better alternatives to Webtrends at the lower end of the market. I recommend you look at Urchin by Google or HBX by WebSidestory.

Jon

I still think you should give Urchin a try, or maybe the lower end version of HBX or Webtrends. Urchin is the best value for money around at the moment. From memory its real time too, if thats wot u really need...  

On 20:47:47 8 October 2005 Markd wrote:

Hello all

Finally made contact with Sane. 

Unfortunately, they told me that their 'on demand' service actually isn't a 'real time', tagged program, but rather a log analysis package.

I was a little surprised as I (mistakenly) took a service called 'on demand' to mean that the reports could be accessed at any time to get a snapshot of visitor activity. Apparently, an analysis of server logs is still required to get the info.

The cost of 'on demand' also seemed very high and started at an extremely high page impression rate.

Oh, well - back to the drawing board. Any further suggestions/recommendations welcomed...

On 16:39:33 5 October 2005 SimonSCL wrote:

Craigsullivan,

Who was the reseller you contacted in the UK ?
I'd be keen to find out.
And yes,I'd be keen to find out what you mean by unique.

On 16:32:36 5 October 2005 Markd wrote:

Hi there

I was interested in your comment about Nettracker 'being unique'. Can you expand a little on what you mean by this please?

On 16:22:00 5 October 2005 jbovard wrote:

Nettracker is a very good product but it is unique. have you made 100% sure it does what you need it to first?

They have a full demo downloadable. I suggest you check it out locally

On 12:38:40 4 October 2005 Markd wrote:

Thought I would give an update to those who may be interested. Contacted Sane who in turn put me in touch with one of their UK resellers. After extended discussions, they said they couldn't provide the 'on demand' service we are interested in and said we would have to contact Sane in the US direct for this.

Got in touch with them 2 days ago - still waiting for a response!

I always think the standard of response and customer service following an initial enquiry is a good benchmark for the level of care and support offered in the future.

Hmmm....

On 09:39:57 26 September 2005 craigsullivan wrote:

Well,

I would try netracker (www.sane.com) as you'll get accuracy of visitor numbers as well as multiple visit recognition.  A good example of multi visit recognition is where someone arrives from an offer, views several products a week later and almost a month later, purchases the product.  How many people honestly associate the purchase with the initial offer - not many....

Regards,

Craig.

On 12:15:27 19 September 2005 Markd wrote:

Thanks for the help so far.

Jon - at the moment we are not using WebTrends at all, we are using HitsLink. Yes, we were looking at Webtrends On Demand product - it looks good but is very expensive.

Cookies are used - as far as I know they are session based. Do you know if the products you mention would solve the specific issue we have of measuring 'uniques', 'new' and 'repeat' visitors? A recommendation which addresses this issue would be very useful - obviously I will check them out.

Thanks again.

On 12:04:41 19 September 2005 jbovard wrote:

Hi

What version of WebTrends are you using? You need to be very specific in terms of the product version.

Also, are you sure you are using Webtrends tagging based solution? Webtrends LIVE was superseded by Wetrends on demand.

Are you using Cookies to identify users? If so are they permanent or session cookies?

I agree that there are better alternatives to Webtrends at the lower end of the market. I recommend you look at Urchin by Google or HBX by WebSidestory.

Jon

There is no problem at all. You just give subtly incorrect definitions. Your "New Visitors - those who have come to the site for the first time ever" should be suplemented with more specific "in this month", cause absolutly every visitor of your site has sometime come there first time, and there is no need for such over-agregate value. But with that addition, it becomes indistinguishable from your first definition of "Unique Visitors - those who have visited for the first time in that month", which is incorrect. Actually, the Unique Visitors is the very figure that you need, as one might expect. The only non-trivial thing here is how easily your vendors got confused over such a straightforward matter.

On 21:39:15 16 September 2005 Markd wrote:

Hi all
I wonder if you could offer us some advice on a problem we are having measuring a 'total' number of visits to a site.

Currently, we are using a 'tagged' statistics system - adding Javascript to the web page which sends info on a 'real time' basis to a server. It's OK on most things, but doesn't seem able to give us a 'total' number of visitors for a given time frame, say a month.

So what we get is:

Unique Visitors - those who have visited for the first time in that month

New Visitors - those who have come to the site for the first time ever.

But what it doesn't seem to log is any subsequent (repeat) visits by those who may have come back after their first (Unique) visit in that month.

The implications of this are that if a site gets 100 Unique Visitors in a month, and those visitors come back 10 times during the same month, approx. 1000 'repeat visits' are not logged at all. Obviously, this makes a 'total visitor' number impossible to measure.

Is this inherent in all 'tagged' based stats programs? I have contacted the Tech Support of the makers of the package we are using in case we are misinterpreting the stats, but they aren't the best Support we have encountered and are not being very helpful.

I know that Web Trends 'on demand' package can break visitors down in this way, but it's really expensive, so any other recommendations are welcome. 

Most of our sites are B2B and information based - so there is not really a need for the advanced e-commerce/purchasing analysis that I have seen in some stats packages.

Hope you may be able to help.

I use different vendor, so I cannot be absolutly sure, but let me explain as I know it from my vendor experience. Unique visitors for particular time frame are ALL visitors that bothered to show up on your site during that time frame, regardless of how many times they viewed your site during that time frame or before. If someone, say, viewed 10 different pages on your site i.e. had 10 views during that time frame (as you note), that visitor is still counted as 1 unique visitor. The term 'unique' in this context means NOT that visitor is unique for that time frame (i.e. not visited before), but simply means that visitor was identified i.e. was distinguished by system from other visitors. 

New Visitors for that time frame shows the portion of Unique Visitors who have not visited your site before that time frame. Subtracting New Visitors from Unique Visitors will give you Returning Visitors.

Hope this helps.

On 09:07:39 17 October 2005 Markd wrote:

Meganom

A number of things here:

Firstly, I expect vendors to actually help me (firstly as an existing/potential client, secondly as somebody who freely admit to providing 'subtly incorrect definitions) in fully identifying information requirements. I believe, albeit in 'laymans terms', to have fully explained our - and our clients - requirements with regards to visitors to our current provider and others we are investigating.

Secondly, if you read my original enquiry, we ARE attempting to find out about visitors for a particular timeframe - such as a month, week, quarter etc.. Actually it is possible to distinguish between visitors who may have both 'unique' in a particular month (but have visited the site previously) and those who may well have been both 'unique' that month and 'first time ever' visitors. 

What we are struggling with our current system is to measure 'repeat visitors', again using a month as an example. If 100 visitors are 'unique' that month, but return 10 times after their first unique visit during that month, the subsequent visits are not accurately measured.

When a client comes to my company looking to buy services or for assistance, we try our best to help regardless of how 'subtle' or otherwise their knowledge (either of the matter at hand or any technical solutions we may provide) and do our best to help. This approach is magnified by a factor of a 100 if they are an existing client and provide us with business.

On 22:29:57 16 October 2005 Meganom wrote:

There is no problem at all. You just give subtly incorrect definitions. Your "New Visitors - those who have come to the site for the first time ever" should be suplemented with more specific "in this month", cause absolutly every visitor of your site has sometime come there first time, and there is no need for such over-agregate value. But with that addition, it becomes indistinguishable from your first definition of "Unique Visitors - those who have visited for the first time in that month", which is incorrect. Actually, the Unique Visitors is the very figure that you need, as one might expect. The only non-trivial thing here is how easily your vendors got confused over such a straightforward matter.

On 21:39:15 16 September 2005 Markd wrote:

Hi all
I wonder if you could offer us some advice on a problem we are having measuring a 'total' number of visits to a site.

Currently, we are using a 'tagged' statistics system - adding Javascript to the web page which sends info on a 'real time' basis to a server. It's OK on most things, but doesn't seem able to give us a 'total' number of visitors for a given time frame, say a month.

So what we get is:

Unique Visitors - those who have visited for the first time in that month

New Visitors - those who have come to the site for the first time ever.

But what it doesn't seem to log is any subsequent (repeat) visits by those who may have come back after their first (Unique) visit in that month.

The implications of this are that if a site gets 100 Unique Visitors in a month, and those visitors come back 10 times during the same month, approx. 1000 'repeat visits' are not logged at all. Obviously, this makes a 'total visitor' number impossible to measure.

Is this inherent in all 'tagged' based stats programs? I have contacted the Tech Support of the makers of the package we are using in case we are misinterpreting the stats, but they aren't the best Support we have encountered and are not being very helpful.

I know that Web Trends 'on demand' package can break visitors down in this way, but it's really expensive, so any other recommendations are welcome. 

Most of our sites are B2B and information based - so there is not really a need for the advanced e-commerce/purchasing analysis that I have seen in some stats packages.

Hope you may be able to help.