Usage stats- who gets what?

PaulSpot · March 15, 2006

I have sort of a two part question: it seems like a "pro" feature is "detailed usage statistics". Is this something different/better than what I get with a power user account? It seems like the stats that are there are pretty cool, but are very difficult to wade through. One big bar graph per gallery just ends up showing me that yes indeed, a lot more thumbnails are seen than medium images

I want to be able to sort them, say, by conversion ratio, or maybe ignore the number of thumbnails, or... well basically get a lot of better views of the data provided.

So, does the pro one allow you to just do more of the same (like just including how many people bought stuff) or does it give you more usable views of the same data I have?

Maybe there are 3rd party programs that let you download your usage stats and graph them out or something? Are my usage stats available for download in some format via the API, as a power user? 'Cuz maybe I could attempt to write such a program for folks that are curious about what's most popular on their site, without having to examine every single bar graph (at 60 galleries, it's already undoable!).

I'm not complaining or anything- I'm just trying to understand what's currently available. I don't necessarily expect smugmug to have every different way of viewing the data I could desire.

Thanks.

Andy · March 15, 2006

PaulSpot wrote:

I have sort of a two part question: it seems like a "pro" feature is "detailed usage statistics". Is this something different/better than what I get with a power user account? It seems like the stats that are there are pretty cool, but are very difficult to wade through. One big bar graph per gallery just ends up showing me that yes indeed, a lot more thumbnails are seen than medium images I want to be able to sort them, say, by conversion ratio, or maybe ignore the number of thumbnails, or... well basically get a lot of better views of the data provided.

So, does the pro one allow you to just do more of the same (like just including how many people bought stuff) or does it give you more usable views of the same data I have?

Maybe there are 3rd party programs that let you download your usage stats and graph them out or something? Are my usage stats available for download in some format via the API, as a power user? 'Cuz maybe I could attempt to write such a program for folks that are curious about what's most popular on their site, without having to examine every single bar graph (at 60 galleries, it's already undoable!).

I'm not complaining or anything- I'm just trying to understand what's currently available. I don't necessarily expect smugmug to have every different way of viewing the data I could desire.

Thanks.

Hi Paul - I'll answer in about 30 mins - have to run out for a bit..

Andy · March 15, 2006

PaulSpot wrote:

I have sort of a two part question: it seems like a "pro" feature is "detailed usage statistics". Is this something different/better than what I get with a power user account? It seems like the stats that are there are pretty cool, but are very difficult to wade through. One big bar graph per gallery just ends up showing me that yes indeed, a lot more thumbnails are seen than medium images I want to be able to sort them, say, by conversion ratio, or maybe ignore the number of thumbnails, or... well basically get a lot of better views of the data provided.

So, does the pro one allow you to just do more of the same (like just including how many people bought stuff) or does it give you more usable views of the same data I have?

Maybe there are 3rd party programs that let you download your usage stats and graph them out or something? Are my usage stats available for download in some format via the API, as a power user? 'Cuz maybe I could attempt to write such a program for folks that are curious about what's most popular on their site, without having to examine every single bar graph (at 60 galleries, it's already undoable!).

I'm not complaining or anything- I'm just trying to understand what's currently available. I don't necessarily expect smugmug to have every different way of viewing the data I could desire.

Thanks.

The usage stats are the same across all account levels. Power and Pro users can take advantage of third-party programs, like statcounter, or google analytics, to get even deeper and more thorough information on viewership. I use google anaylitics on my site, it works wonderfully. Many folks like and use statcounter, too.

We have how-tos on both:

http://dgrin.smugmug.com/gallery/1092794
http://dgrin.smugmug.com/gallery/1092684

I hope this helps!

Barb · March 15, 2006

Andy wrote:

The usage stats are the same across all account levels. Power and Pro users can take advantage of third-party programs, like statcounter, or google analytics, to get even deeper and more thorough information on viewership. I use google anaylitics on my site, it works wonderfully. Many folks like and use statcounter, too.

We have how-tos on both:

http://dgrin.smugmug.com/gallery/1092794
http://dgrin.smugmug.com/gallery/1092684

I hope this helps!

Andy,

Do you have any idea when Google Analytics will be available again to sign up? I've been on their waiting list for some time. Just wondering if you knew anything because you already have an account.

Andy · March 15, 2006

bygates wrote:

Andy,

Do you have any idea when Google Analytics will be available again to sign up? I've been on their waiting list for some time. Just wondering if you knew anything because you already have an account.

I'm afraid I don't - sorry - I guess I got lucky, I was one of the early signer-uppers...

Barb · March 15, 2006

Andy wrote:

I'm afraid I don't - sorry - I guess I got lucky, I was one of the early signer-uppers...

Yeah, I was an early signer-upper for Gmail, but missed out on the Analytics part!

PaulSpot · March 16, 2006

Andy wrote:

The usage stats are the same across all account levels. Power and Pro users can take advantage of third-party programs, like statcounter, or google analytics, to get even deeper and more thorough information on viewership. I use google anaylitics on my site, it works wonderfully. Many folks like and use statcounter, too.

We have how-tos on both:

http://dgrin.smugmug.com/gallery/1092794
http://dgrin.smugmug.com/gallery/1092684

I hope this helps!

Thanks for the quick response!
If I'm not mistaken, these are rather generic services, right? Like, I wouldn't be able to tell which galleries were getting the hits without looking through a list of URLs and finding all the ones associated with one gallery (or picture?) and then following that URL to see which gallery it was from? In what way do you use these external services?

Also- was there a way to download the stats smugmug keeps? Even the data provided there - # of hits per month per photo (per gallery, etc) is plenty enough info for me. It just needs to be sorted out better...

Andy · March 16, 2006

PaulSpot wrote:

Thanks for the quick response!
If I'm not mistaken, these are rather generic services, right? Like, I wouldn't be able to tell which galleries were getting the hits without looking through a list of URLs and finding all the ones associated with one gallery (or picture?) and then following that URL to see which gallery it was from? In what way do you use these external services?

Also- was there a way to download the stats smugmug keeps? Even the data provided there - # of hits per month per photo (per gallery, etc) is plenty enough info for me. It just needs to be sorted out better...

They are very specific services, indeed! I can tell who visited my site, by IP, what sort of computer connection, who the ISP was, where they are geographically, what browser, monitor size, what page they came in on, where they lingered time-wise, and what page they exited on.

Take a look at www.starexplorer.com I believe Nik's got a way in his program to download stats..

PaulSpot · March 16, 2006

Andy wrote:

They are very specific services, indeed! I can tell who visited my site, by IP, what sort of computer connection, who the ISP was, where they are geographically, what browser, monitor size, what page they came in on, where they lingered time-wise, and what page they exited on.

Take a look at www.starexplorer.com I believe Nik's got a way in his program to download stats..

Oh, yeah, I mean I'm sure they have awesome information about the users and IPs and such... but it isn't going to correlate well to what galleries and photos they were using, right? It's generalized into pages... it loses the notion of galleries and photos, medium and large sizes, etc... right? I may not be making sense....

I'll check out starexplorer and see what it's got

flyingpylon · March 16, 2006

PaulSpot wrote:

Oh, yeah, I mean I'm sure they have awesome information about the users and IPs and such... but it isn't going to correlate well to what galleries and photos they were using, right? It's generalized into pages... it loses the notion of galleries and photos, medium and large sizes, etc... right? I may not be making sense....

I'll check out starexplorer and see what it's got

The thing you have to be aware of is that none of these javascript, page-based stat counters are going to tell you what specific image files have been requested, how many times, and how much bandwidth they have used. You can get that information from within Smugmug, but the critical piece that's missing is WHERE the hits are coming from (like if you have external sharing turned on and someone has "hotlinked" one or more of your photos). You would need access to the raw web server log files for that, and they're not available.

rainforest1155 · March 16, 2006

PaulSpot wrote:

Oh, yeah, I mean I'm sure they have awesome information about the users and IPs and such... but it isn't going to correlate well to what galleries and photos they were using, right? It's generalized into pages... it loses the notion of galleries and photos, medium and large sizes, etc... right? I may not be making sense....

Have a look at this screenshot from statcounter:

This is what it looks like when you've got statcounter on your site. You'll see from where the visitor came (in the table below this is always the url in green text in the 2nd line) and which page he visited. In my case I turned on to display the page title the visitor gets to see in his browser instead of the smugmug url, but you can change this.
In this case I can see that the visitor came from yahoo.com searching for Lisa. He's gone into my Lisa gallery and now you even see the individual pictures he clicked on all with the accurate times AND even with the caption of the photo he clicked on.

Anything else you would like to see or have explained further?

Hope this helps - just try it for yourself,
Sebastian

Usage stats- who gets what?

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