Minty Fresh Web Stats
Web stats have become increasingly more important in recent years. For those engaged in Adword/PPC campaigns, tracking clicks and website usage is a must.
The solution to this has been web analytics packages such as Google Analytics or the soon to be launched Microsoft Gatineau. There’s no doubting that Google Analytics has a nice interface to display your website data. However there is an inherent problem with using these free analytics programs provided by such companies as Google.
Aaron Wall made some interesting comments on his blog regarding this here:
Google and your large competitors have access to enough data to capture the large trends, but what happens on the micro-level is what is most relevant to you, and, if your site is not as strong as competing sites, keeping that data private (or, at least as best you can given new affordable competitive analysis services) is required if you want to maintain and grow your business.
If this is the case, then a bought solution may be the best alternative. Some web analytic software can be expensive of technical to implement, so a cheaper solution such as Mint may suit smaller businesses with a one-time fee of $30 for a single license.
The beauty of this solution is that it is installed on your own web server giving you sole access to your data, without risking potential snooping from the likes of Google.
There are certain requirements that your web server need to meet in order to run Mint.
- Web server running Apache
- MySQL database (3.x and up)
- PHP scripting (4.2.3 and up)
- Safari, Opera, Firefox & IE (not IE on Mac)
Before purchasing Mint it is strongly recommended that you run the test first. This is fairly simple to do. You will need your database user name, password and database name. Detailed instructions are available on the Mint website. To see a live demo of Mint please have a look at Designlogue’s Mint page.
The great think about Mint is the ability to tailor the program to include extra stats, or remove parts that you don’t need. These add-ons are called Peppers, and there are a range of free peppers to choose from on the website, as well as a growing range of third-party peppers to install on your package.
For $30 I have to say this is a pretty good analytics program, and the reason I liked the fact that it is private, being run from my server. Of course you can use Mint with another analytics package if you prefer.
Hi Rob
How do I Email you direct? wanna talk FX
Cheers Howard