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Using analytics on my website

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Re: Using analytics on my website

#21

Post by bluish29 »

KronisLV wrote: post #4
the_gipsy wrote: post #2

[flagged]

> Just use GoAcces for fuck's sake. GoAccess seems pretty cool and is probably a good task for the job, when you need something simple, thanks for recommending it: https://goaccess.io/ Even if you have analytics of some sort already in place, I think it'd probably still be a nice idea to run GoAccess on your server, behind some additional auth, so you can check up on how the web servers are performing (in lieu of oth…

Actually you don't even need Goaccess running all the time. They parse nginx logs directly so you can only run it when you want to do it (although in practice it takes sometime to parse and create graphs).

Re: Using analytics on my website

#22

Post by victorbjorklund »

the_gipsy wrote: post #2

[flagged]

The benefit with using JS instead of access logs are that scraping bots, security scanners etc usually don't call your JS analytics so for a small site the number % of bots can be 90% of the logs.

And you can use your analytics data to better understand your users because again most bots won't trigger your analytics script (because why would they execute it and waste their CPU cycles on that?). And yes, you can't trust the exact numbers (because adblockers, etc) but you can see the trends:

Page A has 1000 visitors per day. Page B has 10 visitors per day. We can conclude that A is more popular than B (why that is another question).

Or Page A had 100 visitors on average last month and now it has 1000 visitors on average. We can conclude it got more popular. Etc.

Do you need that for your personal blog? Probably not. Do you need that on your e-commerce shop to verify wether you 1 million dollar ad spend makes a difference or not? Probably.

Re: Using analytics on my website

#23

Post by rambambram »

quickthrower2 wrote: post #12
jacquesm wrote: post #8

I went the other way entirely: no analytics, 100% static site, no logging. It's super fast and it takes away one more thing to monitor and keep up, it's not as if I'm running an e-commerce site.

Good idea - one "analytic" is to put your email on the site, and see how many people say hello!

I have visitor statistics enabled on my site and I like to see how many visits I get on articles. The point is to not see more in it than it can tell you, so I don't really understand the 'remove all statistics because it doesn't matter' argument.

However, I must say your idea is a very good one!

Re: Using analytics on my website

#24

Post by vouaobrasil »

jacquesm wrote: post #8

I went the other way entirely: no analytics, 100% static site, no logging. It's super fast and it takes away one more thing to monitor and keep up, it's not as if I'm running an e-commerce site.

I do this as well for most of my sites, and I stopped using analytics. I just want to write what I want to write...to hell with maximizing views.

Re: Using analytics on my website

#25

Post by AlexDragusin »

jacquesm wrote: post #8

I went the other way entirely: no analytics, 100% static site, no logging. It's super fast and it takes away one more thing to monitor and keep up, it's not as if I'm running an e-commerce site.

I went this way even running a design service website, works great, lets me focus on what matters, serving my actual customers and that's the best metric of all, actual paid orders, that's all I need to know :)

Re: Using analytics on my website

#26

Post by cuu508 »

rambambram wrote: post #23
quickthrower2 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good idea - one "analytic" is to put your email on the site, and see how many people say hello!

I have visitor statistics enabled on my site and I like to see how many visits I get on articles. The point is to not see more in it than it can tell you, so I don't really understand the 'remove all statistics because it doesn't matter' argument. However, I must say your idea is a very good one!

I think the argument is "remove 3rd-party analytics because it is not worth the downsides".

Re: Using analytics on my website

#27

Post by account42 »

sofixa wrote: post #11
the_gipsy wrote: post #2

[flagged]

> Just use GoAcces for fuck's sake. You don't need more than access logs. What are you going to do with that analytics data anyway? How much can you even trust that it's real and not bots that are getting better every day? I can provide you a very simple example. You have a blog, with articles. On a multi-thousand word article, you know that traffic that spent You get the point, I hope. Access logs are useless for th…

You don't need analytics to know that you should build a responsive website and use best practices to keep it resource usage small enough for old devices.

Re: Using analytics on my website

#28

Post by denton-scratch »

victorbjorklund wrote: post #22
the_gipsy wrote: post #2

[flagged]

The benefit with using JS instead of access logs are that scraping bots, security scanners etc usually don't call your JS analytics so for a small site the number % of bots can be 90% of the logs. And you can use your analytics data to better understand your users because again most bots won't trigger your analytics script (because why would they execute it and waste their CPU cycles on that?). And yes, you can't tru…

> because why would they execute it and waste their CPU cycles on that?

The analytics script is not run using your CPU cycles; those belong to your victim/target.

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