2011/Web Analytics

Session Notes

Notes from Tantek

Open Source Analytics

Packages you can install on your site to self-host your own analytics (rather than depending on Google analytics).

• Matomo - https://matomo.org (formerly Piwik)
• Awstats - http://awstats.sourceforge.net
• OWA - http://openwebanalytics.com

Google Analytics

http://google.com/analytics

Use https://www.google.com/support/googleanalytics/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=55578 to create custom URLs per downstream syndicated service, e.g. Twitter, FB, etc.

FAQ:

• Q: What about page speed delays due to loading Google Analytics external javascript?
  • A: Google tracks in Google Webmaster tools.
  • A: If you download Google Analytics to your site and use the current version, it's Google Analytics Async (been around for a while). The old versions aren't supported any more. However, old sites/plugins may be using the older synchronous versions, and thus their speeds may be unnecessarily slowed down.

Get Clicky

http://getclicky.com

What are the goals?

What are the goals of analytics on your own indieweb site?

• SEO - better search engine ranking
• more traffic
  • ... for a key phrase
  • ... for a group of key phrases
• Which syndicated sites are sending me the most ...
  • ... traffic
  • ... visitors
• Problems with Twitter referrers
  • Twitter clients, e.g. Twitterific sends Twitterific.com

More Tools

Boomerang

From Yahoo.

Login framework from dedicated to page speed.

• actual load speed
• benchmark the speed
• generates server-side logs that you can drop into other things

Twitter Tweet Button

Embeds in general (like a Tweet button) you can test with implementations of sites like:

• mashable.com
• techcrunch.com

which have a ton of 3rd party javascripts etc.