Which Web Stats can track flash site?

[jsong]

Hi;

I just check this topic (http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum39/3633.htm)--Which stats package is right for you, and I think it is very helpful for many people.

Now I would like to ask very expert which web stats can track flash site? please give me some recommendation.

The package I want except tracking flash data feature is:

Target user Personal/small biz/med biz/big biz)?: med to big
Price range for target user?: around $5000
Logfile based or Tagging based?: logfile
Sits on server / third party server / local your PC?: on server or PC
Reporting formats? (HTML, Email, CSV, WORD...): all
Tracks daily unique visitors as well as page views?: Yes
Gives geographic data?: Yes
Graphical or text based reporting?: graphic or Both
Tracks Spiders?: Yes
Tracks conversion data for PPC campaigns?: Optional.
Tracks conversion data for natural search? Yes.

thank you very much for your help.

[GOTseo]

omniture

[edited by: GOTseo at 4:20 pm (utc) on Nov. 20, 2006]

[jsong]

Thank you! :)

[cgrantski]

Wait a minute. If the question is which package will track flash --- they ALL will. Even awstats and analog. Omniture? Yes, even Omniture can do it. They might charge extra, though.

Downloads of swf files get into any logs on any server and any software will count those downloads for you.

If your flash movies have user actions within them (clicks), then your flash movies MUST be programmed so that those clicks cause a reaction in the server log. Or the page tagging, if you aren't using server logs.

And if you set up the flash movies so clicks cause those trackable reactions, then, again, all tracking software will track those events.

Different vendors are better or worse at helping you set up that trackability. Any good Flash programmer should be able to do it, though, once they understand the underlying concept of the trackable events (hits to a log, etc).

Jsong, you said you wanted spider tracking. Omniture and many others use page tagging and page tagging will not track most spiders because most spiders do not request images, and an image request is the core of most page tagging. Page tagging vendors tout this as an advantage - no spider traffic to clutter up your user data. You really need log files, not page tagging, to see what spiders are doing.

Also, Jsong, if you want GOOD geographic tracking you will want more than simple DNS resolution of visitor IP addresses. Only a few vendors supply the extra databases needed to do this well. I can mention the one I use, which is WebTrends, but I don't want to give the impression that it is the only one.

And if you don't want third-party server, you are definitely ruling out Omniture, Google Analytics, etc. You are looking for a "software" solution and I believe the referred item you mention makes that clear.

[jsong]

Very helpful, thanks a lot!

[jsong]

Cgrantski:

You said "If your flash movies have user actions within them (clicks), then your flash movies MUST be programmed so that those clicks cause a reaction in the server log." Could you tell me how to program it? After writting some scripts on each click, does web stats need to be modified as well?

thanks

[cgrantski]

I can't tell you how because I just tell Flash programmers what I want and they do it. I tell them something like this:

"Make sure that every click within the Flash movie sends a request back to the server, requesting a non-displaying file and in a way that the visitor does not see anything happen. The non-displaying file should have two query parameters: first, a parameter called movie= that contains the ID of the movie being played. Second, a parameter called "page=" that contains a description of the result of the click, which the visitor will experience as (sort of) a new page."

That's the general principle. You can set it up any way you want as a variation of that. The key is having the movie perform a certain kind of call when the visitor makes a click. In fact, you can also make the call happen even when the visitor does not make a click --- for example when the end of the movie is reached, or the halfway point, or after 30 seconds have elapsed in the browser, or whatever. Programmers do this magic for me.

At the end, your log will have a lot of instances of requests for the non-displaying files with all the click activity appearing in the parameters. This is just additional fodder for your analysis program. A good program will be able to report on them just like any other page with parameters.

A good analysis program will also be able to give you its own version of the above instructions. We use WebTrends which has documentation for making this work with their program. WebTrends also has special code in its tags that does part of the job for you. Also, Macromedia has produced at least one white paper about tracking the activity within a flash movie.

This isn't for a beginner but it isn't very hard.

[jsong]

Thank you very much! :)

[kichus]

Am not sure about whether I can post any links to a post, but last week I did a post in my small blog about the same querry and you may find it interesting.

[edited by: Receptional at 12:36 pm (utc) on Nov. 27, 2006]
[edit reason] Half edited... track kichus down if you want to find the blog guys :) [/edit]