I know a lot of developers and designers that swear by Mint as hosted
analytics tool: http://www.haveamint.com/
I love Google Analytics - it's a great free tool and can be used to track
more than basic page views...such as products in e-commerce stores, set up
funnels and filters to find out how many people are making it through to
your specified goal (such as filling in a form, checking out their shopping
basket), so it's really worth reading up on that.
Of course you're right to also have a hosted solution too, for a number of
reasons, one of which being that GA relies upon the client (browser) having
javascript available, which although a massive percentage do, you end up
with no data at all for those that don't.
Another point to note is the appropriate usage of GA tracking code as it can
impact page loading times. First of all, it's worth having the included
javascript just before the closing body tag (which I'm sure you all would
do) and secondly, it's worth checking out their new asynchronous tracking
code, which minimises impact:
http://code.google.com/apis/analytics/docs/tracking/asyncTracking.html
Hope that helps!
Dan
Dan Donald
Here in the Hive
07870 156944
http://hereinthehive.com
http://www.linkedin.com/in/hereinthehive
http://twitter.com/hereinthehive
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