Just thought I would find out from others what they think.
Personally I would like to see DeepMetrix back.
For those who haven't been with long enough to experience DeepMetrix, please check out DeepMetrix Website to see what they offer and compare it to Urchin.
Make your own choice.

I agree with ya Strapworks! If went back to DeepMetrix I wouldn't be paying a third-party company for my stats.

I know the stats are "basic" and part of the package. It's better than tossing a hit counter on my site but for the trouble I'd rather something better. I think alot of people agree with us...

I kind of feel bad for doing this though, in that I was one of the customers who complained about the DeepMetrix stats and there down time. And I asked for to upgrade to a more reliable program.
But, with my understanding now that good stats cost good money, I am starting this thread to see how many would be interested in seeing DeepMetrix come back.
I do remind everyone though (and remind myself), that this is 's choosing and they are the ones that pay for our stats program.
Hey Captain, if more people want DeepMetrix back, is it something feasible?
Thanks

Can you add another opinion to your poll which is "I am not sure about Deep Metrix but I am not really happy with Urchin. Id you want my $10.00 worth I think it works great for what we are paying for. As Captain has said before, the others are more costly.

If you look at Urchins website you will see that we are not getting all the stats that we could. You can get IP addresses, country etc. I think I read somewhere in this forum that these were requests. What I don;t see are who is on and doing what at this moment which I think Deep MEtrix did and it was neat.

I have set up my own little system to see who is visiting what specific catagories by creating a new image folder called header and each Catagory has a specific graphic on the page which is placed in the Header folder. From that I can do a report on "Files" and see how what header images have the most views which tells me which page gets looked at the most.

What is it in Deep Metrix that we can have that Urchin does not have. \?

Well, as far as I remember (and I could be wrong), but I think Urchin actually costs more than DeepMetrix.
But, what DeepMetrix offers over Urchin is the ability to tell you who is online at this moment, the current page they are visiting, and how long they have been on.
It has better graphs (in my opinion) to show visitors, clicks, etc. It will show you (in a world graph) how many people are coming from different parts of the world! (I love that graph). And if I remember right it shows the visits for every one of your pages (not just the top 20 or 100).
It goes into more detail about referrals and keywords used in search engines.
The only reason (that I remember) got rid of DeepMetrix and got Urchin was because DeepMetrix was very unstable. It would go offline for hours or even days at a time (even though it still kept stats, I never saw a 0 day).
But, personally, I like the great graphs, more information, and details it provides over Urchin, and also the constant stats it compiles (no 0 days). I have learned my lesson and would be willing to live with not looking at my stats for a day or two in exchange for the great stats I can look at when I can login.
Just my two cents

We have our server admin team and our entire programming staff meeting in St. Louis starting this Monday (they will be here for the next 4 weeks as we begin to finalize 4.0).

I will address these issues in a meeting... and find very accurate answers for you.

All we want is for our clients to be happy with the stats program we offer. Many were unhappy with DeepMatrix because it was often unreliable.

After complaints, we invested many, many resources switching our clients to Urchin. Unfortunetly, some clients are unhappy with Urchin.

We could switch back to DeepMetrix, but then 1/2 of the client base would get mad for us switching back to Deep Metrix.

I think it would be very difficult and impractical to offer both.

Clients... what do you recommend we do?

Captain,

If 1/2 the clients will be upset by going back to deepmatrix, leave things the way they are.

An alternative would be to poll all clients via email and proceed from there.

I realize that the poll has already started. However, what about those of us that never used deepmatrix in the first place.

How can we participate in the poll? I don't use my own stats program and I do care, but never used deepmatrix.

MGriff-

What are your thoughts on Urchin...? Do you like or dislike?

I don't have any complaints with Urchin. Perhaps I don't know what I'm missing, but Urchin gives me what I need to know at this point.

I use the data to determine:

1. overall traffic
2. source specific traffic
3. repeat traffic (estimated)
4. which product page are being visited (thanks to the method described by danilyn22)

With this data I can calculate trends and forecast traffic. That is all I need - for now atleast. Urchin suits me just fine.

If anyone else knows of some valuable ways to use Urchin's data, please post it in the "How do you use Urchin data" thread. Unless I am missing something, I don't see what is so bad about Urchin.

I like the idea of polling clients by email. Obviously very few people (compared to all your clients) visit this forum and actually provide input, so its somewhat of a squed perspective of the whole.
Actually having the option to choose between Urchin and DeepMetrix would be awesome, but I understand that its probably an impossible task.
It won't hurt me any if you guys stick with Urchin, it works for its purpose, I just like the extra functionality of DeepMetrix and the great graphs they provide.
It makes me regret ever complaining about it in the first place because I now find that I like it more than I thought and switching to a new stats program didn't solve the problems I thought could be solved.
I guess we'll find out through the poll what people like.
MGriffin - You can visit DeepMetrix's website at http://www.deepmetrix.com and see what they offer, I am not sure beyond that how you can see the differences between them and Urchin. The coolest thing I liked is a map of the world and it being color coded by how many people are visiting from certain areas. It also showed you how many customers were in your store at this moment, what they were looking at, where they had been, and how long they have been there. I liked those features a lot. If DeepMetrix were more stable (online 99% of the time) than it would be the best stats program I have ever seen.
Just my two cents

I agree... an e-mail or a "poll" in the admin panel... will give a broader snapshot of client approval.

Let me bring this up in the meeting this Wednesday morning.

The battle continues....

Is the major complaint with deepmatrix related to periods of downtime or delayed updates?

I conducted an experiment yesterday. This morning, I have noted that Urchin didn't record a couple of sources that I intentionally used to click through to my site.

Has anyone else noted this type of inconsistency?

Yeah, I've noticed similar issues MGriffin.

You get what you pay for. Every program for web stats will have options - each of which always cost a little more money and resource.

Perhaps a tiered structure for stats are in order. For the basic package - you get what you get. If you want more features, a modest (VERY modest) surcharge should apply.

From what I have gathered... the largest complaint was downtime for Deep Metrix... and an unresponsive support group. Technology always breaks. The aspects that seperates good tech companies from the bad are the service and support.

Tiered stats may prove to be a billing nightmare. It is not our intention to make money off of stats. We break even with them at best. We just want a cost-effective stats solution that works and that are client's are satisifed with them.

Yeah, the only complaint I remember is DeepMatrix having down time. But, personally, I would rather have really good acurate stats and a little down time, than inacurate stats that I can look at every day, but looking at a 0 for the day does me no good. I don't even look at the stats every other day anymore because I am not sure if there is anything to look at and I am not sure if they are accurate.
I think this type of poll would work best. Poll posted in Admin section asking customers whether they prefer DeepMatrix, Urchin, or No Comment. Also provide links to DeepMatrix's and Urchin's websites so that people can read about what both offer if they haven't used one or the other.
Thanks Captain for listening to my thread, I really appreciate your companies customer service, many other companies would just overlook this.
Maybe even a link to this thread from the Admin section would help clients understand why the poll is happening and also may attract more clients to the forum knowing that important decisions are going on that they should be in on.

I briefly spoke with Captain on this issue this morning and thought I'd just share my experience with statistic programs.

Urchin
I've never used it, so no comments. But from the demo site it looks pretty nice.

DeepMetrix
I'm using it now. My main reason for choosing DeepMetrix was the fact it will use SQL Server 2000 or mySQL as its backend. However, its very database resource hungry and I find the results somewhat confusing as well. I'm also not even completely sure if the stats are accurate.

WebTrends
This is by the best software I've ever used. It's completely awesome, runs like normal software on your system and is very informative. However, after the 30 day free trial, I didn't see justification in the $10,000 price tag.

Mach5 FastStats Analyzer
This is by far my favorite statistic software. It's simple, easy to use and very understandable. The only disadvantage is the fact it isn't 'live' like DeepMetrix and WebTrends. It'll run a report whenever you schedule one. I usually scheduled one once a day at midnight. I'm looking forward to switching back to this software on my own personal server. I also don't know how realistic it would be for MC to operate.

WebTrends I have used in the past and man the information it gives you is incredible, again the cost of the program is beyond reasonable. I have been running this software on a server for 4 years now and have not had one hic-up with it yet.

I have mixed feelings about Urchin. I my eyes it doesn't provide enough of the right information and I have never worked with Deep Matrix. The fact that you can see who is online at the time is a very BIG plus, that would outweigh the down time. But how reliable is that information that Deep Matrix supplies, I guess tests need to be conducted to figure that out?

At any rate a good thing about Urchin is every time I have gone to it, it worked - and it gives me the very basics of what one needs to know. I just want more detail.

Maybe part of the problem is being more familiar with the way Urchin works with out having to go through the manual all the time.

What are your guys/girls thoughts about that?

I highly recommend webtrends for those disatisfied with Urchin.

Here is a tour DeepMetrix provides to show what they offer. <DeepMetrix Tour>I think the big battle going on here is more about what people need rather than the stats program itself.
Some people need everyday basic stats that gives them a readout of how to market the very next day. These people need to see their stats every day, but just need the bare minimum of information. Urchin is their bag.
Some people need heavier stats, stats with more information and a better presentation format. These people need stats every third day or even once a week in use for their weekly business meetings. The graphs and extensive information provided helps you determine the future for next week or even next month in a way that is easily viewable for everyone (graphs are key in business meetings with employees who may not understand basic stats). It can also be a bonus to know how many customers are online at a certain time and the stats of their experience in your store. DeepMetrix is your bag
I guess with this whole thread experience I have realized that you will never make all clients happy because everyone needs a certain type of stats program.
I guess all could do (which I don't blame them in saying "hell no") is to offer a choice between different stats programs.

Just thought I would post some pictures of just a few of the things DeepMetrix offers. For those who don't know anything about DeepMetrix.




There are many more at this page DeepMetrix Reports
Or take their Tour at LiveStats Tour

Urchin 5.0 has just been released! We are waiting for the version to stabalize before upgrading, but it should solve many of the issues and offer broader functionality.

HERE is Urchin's recent announcement regarding version 5.

URCHIN 5 OUT NOW!
Some of Urchin 5's top features:

SVG Business Ready™ Graphics - Gorgeous, fast-loading, scalable, and importable into most common Office applications.

UTM2 - Even greater accuracy, and many new reports based on client-side data collection - screen rez, color depth, Javascript version, etc.

DNS Database Now Embedded - 10-times faster DNS lookup courtesy of Urchin 5's built-in auto-updating DNS database.

E-commerce Reporting - New E-commerce Module allows you to analyze shopping cart usage in conjunction with your web traffic to get search term ROI, etc.

Hosting Integration Improved - direct linking to reports, user authentication bypass, and "lite" reporting all now supported.

Modular Licensing - get the advanced/specialized features you need, skip the ones you don't.

And MUCH More!

Take a 30 second tour >>

or view the complete feature and report list >>

Easily isolate certain report entries, such as "casting" in this case, with Urchin's interactive SVG graphics

Urchin 5 Features
Urchin 5 has a wealth of new features. Here are some of the most requested items:

10x Faster DNS Lookup - Urchin 5 features a built-in, auto-updating DNS database, which means you can expect an order of magnitude faster DNS lookup. Further, there is now no need to know the IP address of your DNS server.

FTP Wildcards Now Supported - Have remote log files with names that frequently change? Urchin 5 makes them easy to grab.

UNC Paths Now Supported (Windows) - if you need to access network drives through UNC, Urchin 5 has you covered.

Customizable Reports - Urchin 5 allows you to compare anything to anything with a little tinkering under the hood.

Audience-Specific Reporting Sets - Select the report set ("lite", "IT", "all" etc.) that fits the site.

Direct Report Linking - If you already have a customer login setup, you can link directly to Urchin reports with no additional password hassles.

New Robots & Spiders Reports - find out if your site is being indexed by the search engines.

New Downloads Reports - See which PDFs, .zip, .tar, etc., files are being downloaded from your site - can't do that with an ASP solution!

New IP Addresses Reports - If you need to know actual IP addresses and not just domains, Urchin 5 has your reports.

New Client Parameters Reports - with the UTM2, Urchin shows you the screen resolution, color depth, javascript version, etc., of your site's visitors.

Would it be safe to say that Urchin v5.0 will be included when the monstercommerce v4.0 is realeased?

I will have to speak with Adam about that one... Adam is thinking he will wait for 5.1 to come out to avoid any issues with bugs. Whenever a new software is released there are always bugs... He thinks 5.1 will be more stable.

Another post from me regarding this issue:

I am upgrading both of our stats servers to the latest version of Urchin (v. 5) and will re-enable a lot more of the detailed reporting items.


Supposedly the latest version of Urchin will have a much faster processing engine (although it is really fast currently), and more importantly will have native dns resolution features to speed up the process of getting a lot of the detailed info from the logs that has been left out of basic stats because the stats service is a shared system.

I want to believe that Urchin 5 will be the answer for all parties, although I am leary because the sales people and our account manager seem about two inches away from claiming Urchin 5 will also heal the blind .... so we'll see.

Another quick rundown on stats programs I have seen mentioned now:

1) DeepMetrix - this program has pretty graphs and appears to show incredibly detailed information. Don't be fooled, it's just window dressing on the same info many other programs will show you. As for the "real time view of who's online"...um, that's fake. Even if you ran updates every 5 minutes on log files, you would still only have info from the last time log data was sampled, many times a web site viewing/interaction can last under 2 minutes....those "Who's On" pictures are just snapshots from the last time the logs were sampled...and for example with our running DeepMetrix the collector ran every 5 minutes but took almost 4 hours to sample through all sites logs (at best). So at best anyone using Deep Metrix saw data anywhere from 1-4 hours old with the Who's On thing.

Additionally, as I have said before, Deep Metrix is great when you do stats for up to say, 100 sites...maybe 200, anything past that and you end up with problems....when we tried with 1000 sites I spent countless hours configuring multiple data collectors on different machines to feed into LiveStats (Deep Metrix), to a dedicated stats machine that was a dual proc 1.3 Ghz system with 2 gigs of RAM whose *sole* purpose was to run stats and nothing else. Even then with 5 separate systems polling (decreasing overall load) and a (at the time) of a machine processing this data, data corruption was rampant (using both the MySQL and SQL Server backends). Literally months were spent working with an apathetic (at best) support team @Deep Metrix where eventually the best answer I was able to get was that it was our fault we had customers with such large log files. That was when I gave up completely on Deep Metrix. Sorry to rant, moving on


WebTrends - I cannot think of a single negative thing to say about WebTrends regarding performance, reliability, presentation and correlation of data, etc, etc. The only thing that is an issue with WebTrends is the cost makes it almost completely out of reach for anyone with a normal budget. I tried everything I could to get a price break on this program, etc, etc ....but in the end it seemed like to break even with the resell point for the stats service our customers would have to pay more for the stats service than we charge for the stores themselves (this is not an exaggeration, WebTrends pricing is based upon the number of hits/visitors processed...it gets extremely pricey).


Mach5 - This is actualy a very nice package, but running this as a shared service and managing automation of stats processing, user/stats processing setup, modification, and removal are just too difficult to implement past a single instance for a single person.

FlowerFire/SawMill - not a bad option....maybe not the most visually appealing displays, decent price point, but horrible processing overhead, not easy to manage hundreds or thousands of customer's info, and processing time for just 5 fairly busy sites' logs took almost 6 hours....so that was a no go.

Webalizer for Windows - just not a viable option past a single user scenario. It is free though, otherwise, not too good

There were several others, but seriously, after a long comparison and testing phase (well relatively long as our customers were so frustrated with Deep Metrix they were milled outside the MC offices with torches and pitchforks), Urchin seemed to be the best answer. At the time the most detailed information is not present in stats, hopefully Urchin 5 will resolve this...but in any case I must again stress that the stats service was always intended to be basic information only, and that in previous posts alternate options for stats processing solutions have been provided.

We will see starting Sunday evening/Monday morning how this new version of Urchin works out......

And now I have to give a little bit of ribbing to someone on this thread:

One other point I left out.

We do allow for customers to have access to their log files for their site on a per request basis (meaning each customer has to ask for this option to be allowed, not part of the default set up).....but it has to be said again that downloading your log files for your own processing will count towards your overall bandwidth usage

Anyone requesting this, please keep that in mind, we already have a few customers with daily log files over 1 gigabyte in size...and while has not been over zealous in charging for bandwidth overages, come version 4.0 release/migration we will also have a lot of changes on our internal side that will now fully and properly track bandwidth usage, disk usage, etc, etc.....whereas in the past we did not constantly monitor these items except in extreme abuses, we will now be able to track bandwidth and disk space usage accurately for all of our customers.

I appreciate all the responses. It has opened my eyes more to what it takes to provide stats.
I await Urchin V.5 then. Thanks
And as far as WebTrends goes, someone said $10,000, but I saw on their site $500. I was curious if I saw the right thing or not.
Thanks Again

It's not $10,000... unless you have a huge site. I am under the impression they charge by impression or something along those lines?

I don't pay the bills here... I just study the stats!

It starts at something like $500, but it goes up based on the number of pageviews or hits processed. I remember when I was doing the actual research we went over a few of the sites to get per-customer cost estimates and a few of the more popular ones I ran by them actually *did* come to approx. $10,000....and this was per month.

It was just too crazy for me....but there were all kind of other factors. There were cheaper options than that as well, but the level of information became the same as Urchin or others and was still pricey.

Oh yeah, the scary part was that was what the cost to *us* ( ) would have been, and we would've had to mark up