47 replies to this topic

[SEOdr]

Hi, I'm new here, so sorry if this is redundant. I have just stumbled upon the Urchin 6 demo "video". It seemed like it would be a very valuable tool. I'm just wondering if anyone here that uses it has anything to say about it. Good? Bad? Indifferent? Any input on this subject would be of great help, thanks.

[Jill]

Welcome drr86!

Moved your thread to the logs and tracking section of the forum, where you should get more responses.

[SEOdr]

Ah, cool. Wasn't sure exactly where it should be located. Thanks

[Randy]

Welcome drr86 !

I use Urchin and love it. It's especially good for e-commerce sites if you activate their Urchin Tracking Module (UTM) and E-Commerce/Revenue Source modules.

The basic visitor data is pretty cool, in that it breaks down First Time Uniques and Return Uniques, etc, etc. But the part I love the most is where you can see which search engines and which search terms are bringing you revenue. That one little thing has helped me to better target some terms that I would have never thought of, and they're search terms that convert very, very well.

[JeremyH]

I use Urchin too, and I also love it.

I actually use Urchin 5.7.

Urchin 6 is an "on-demand" service running on their servers and processed by them. I was able to add Urchin 5.7 onto my hosting account for a one-time $10 setup fee. The 5.7 version is software sold to my hosting company that's run on their servers. 5.7 is the latest in the 5 series.

I don't know how 6.0 works, but with 5.7 I don't use any special tags in my code, since it's handled by my server, since 6.0 is an on-demand service, is it like VisitorVille where one would have to insert some code onto every page?

It's not nearly as beautiful as 6.0, but for a one-time $10 fee compared to $199/month, I'm willing to save thousands of dollars/year for a 0.3 version difference.

If your hosting company has something similar, you may want to consider something like that.

One thing I don't care for is I have to log in to see my stats. <_<

[Randy]

Same as Jeremy here. I don't use the "on demand" version.

Not quite a one time charge to have it installed, but close. The colo I get my servers through will sell me a 100 domain license for Urchin 5.x for a whopping $1 per month.

Can't beat that price with a stick! Especially for such an excellent bit of kit.

[Matt B]

We're running a trial with Urchin 6 right now. My big issue so far with the program is that it requires a 20K script to be loaded on each page.

I don't like heavy pages - I'm not sure if the trade-off is worth it or not. We'll see.

[SEOdr]

Great, I'm glad to hear that it is a likeable program. I see what you mean about the heavy pages. I'm not too sure I'd want to do that either, let me know how it's working out for you later on.

I don't know if any of you guys use this or have heard of it, but I currently use Deep Metrix's Livestats, which is ok for what I use it for, but I would like to use something that is a little more hand in hand with my marketing campaigns. I also like the fact that you can compare two arbitrary date ranges with Urchin, because you can only see the stats for one date range with Livestats (comparing two date ranges can get a little irritating with that program). Livestats is the program used by my hosting company.

Another question, is the prettiness of the interface the only major difference between Urchin 6 and Urchin 5.x? Or is there a major difference in functionality as well?

[JeremyH]

Looking over Urchin 6, there seems to be some big improvements over Urchin 5.7. Didn’t Google just buy them? I wonder if the improvements had anything to do with the influx of cash or some insight Google brought along?

Another question, is the prettiness of the interface the only major difference between Urchin 6 and Urchin 5.x? Or is there a major difference in functionality as well?

Can’t they be both? For example with 5.7 I can get a list of how many people visit my website by country. It’s a pie chart and complimentary table. But in 6, it looks like it’s a bubble graph laid onto a map of the world. It’s prettier and gives a lot more information visually, but it tells me nothing more then what I could have already figured out from the data.

it requires a 20K script to be loaded on each page.

DANG! That’s huge!

100 domain license for Urchin 5.x for a whopping $1 per month

Wow, that’s pretty cheap. And I thought I had a good deal. I have to pay a one-time fee per domain or sub-domain, and I have several subs. But still, I’m one of those people that likes to pay for it and get it out of my way. I don’t like monthly fees.

[projectphp]

Can I ask how Urchin works? Is the usual JS include stuff? Or are there a few diffferent versions??

[Matt B]

U6 is currently JS driven and has a great interface. U5 runs off either/or log and JS.

[projectphp]

Ta! Not sure about JS solutions. They always seem so.. I dunno, innaccurate??

[Matt B]

They both have some flaws, but at least you can run a log file in different programs - JS solutions are proprietary. Not a good thing, IMO, as the site manager should "own" that type of info, not the stats provider.

[SEOdr]

Ok, so about that 20k script on each page, would it help at all to put the script in its own file and just use an include?

[JeremyH]

I'm only guessing on this because I don't use Urchin 6, but I'm pretty sure that it's just a small amount of code that you insert on each of your pages.

But that small amount of code will then load a 20K script from the Urchin server.

So it's already in it's own file and then you just use an include.

So it's not like it's 20K/page-view that's coming from your bandwidth, but it will still slow down your visitors that much more.