A new way to do statistics?
redcrown@mchsi.com
Registered Users Posts: 74 Big grins
Long ago, I failed in a brief attempt to understand Google Analytics. But given the recent degradation of Smugmug stats (see thread: http://dgrin.com/showthread.php?t=247841&highlight=statcounter ) I've renewed the effort. I still have a lot to learn, but once I achieved a basic understanding of what's there I had an idea.
So, here's a suggestion for Smugmug: Write us a front end UI to Google Analytics data.
I've learned how to find Smugmug page and image detail in Google Analytics, how to drill down to specific pages, galleries, etc. I see I can generate *.csv files and load them in Microsoft Excel. In Excel I can convert delimited text to columns, sort and otherwise manipulate the data to get accurate totals for individual image views. It's a lot of work, but doable.
It appears Smugmug is still feeding "owner views" to Google Analytics, but it's not counting the excessive and errorenous "pre-fetch" hits. I'd hope that eliminating the owner views is easy.
If someone visits a gallery page, Google Analytics counts that as one hit on the page. It does not count hits on the image thumbnails. When someone clicks a thumb to see an image in Lightbox, Google Analytics counts that as a hit with a URL ending in A, regardless of what size image is served up to fit the users screen. If the user picks a different size, Google Analytics counts another hit with a URL ending in a S, M, L, XL, X2, X3, or O.
This is great. Add all those up and you know total hits on an image (or a page or a gallery). With considerable Exel work you can do that. But then you have no easy way to identify the images, because of the cryptic names Smugmug puts in the URLs. Playing inside Excel, I mannaged to generate the full URL by concatenating cells together and that field is clickable. Loads the image in a browser window (and counts one more hit as owner view).
At that point I realized this would be better done with some custom programming. And if that was done inside Smugmug, a thumbnail could be fetched to show with the stats. Maybe even a clickable thumbnail!
So what do you think, Smugmug. Can you develop a statistics function that sucks our data out of Google Analytics, processes it, gives us basic select and sort ability, and presents a understandable report? The UI could look just like the existing Smugmug statistics, but the data would be accurate and useable.
So, here's a suggestion for Smugmug: Write us a front end UI to Google Analytics data.
I've learned how to find Smugmug page and image detail in Google Analytics, how to drill down to specific pages, galleries, etc. I see I can generate *.csv files and load them in Microsoft Excel. In Excel I can convert delimited text to columns, sort and otherwise manipulate the data to get accurate totals for individual image views. It's a lot of work, but doable.
It appears Smugmug is still feeding "owner views" to Google Analytics, but it's not counting the excessive and errorenous "pre-fetch" hits. I'd hope that eliminating the owner views is easy.
If someone visits a gallery page, Google Analytics counts that as one hit on the page. It does not count hits on the image thumbnails. When someone clicks a thumb to see an image in Lightbox, Google Analytics counts that as a hit with a URL ending in A, regardless of what size image is served up to fit the users screen. If the user picks a different size, Google Analytics counts another hit with a URL ending in a S, M, L, XL, X2, X3, or O.
This is great. Add all those up and you know total hits on an image (or a page or a gallery). With considerable Exel work you can do that. But then you have no easy way to identify the images, because of the cryptic names Smugmug puts in the URLs. Playing inside Excel, I mannaged to generate the full URL by concatenating cells together and that field is clickable. Loads the image in a browser window (and counts one more hit as owner view).
At that point I realized this would be better done with some custom programming. And if that was done inside Smugmug, a thumbnail could be fetched to show with the stats. Maybe even a clickable thumbnail!
So what do you think, Smugmug. Can you develop a statistics function that sucks our data out of Google Analytics, processes it, gives us basic select and sort ability, and presents a understandable report? The UI could look just like the existing Smugmug statistics, but the data would be accurate and useable.
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