Richard Vanderhurst

If you are a right-brainer, you would like a log analysis product that won’t need a 2nd mortgage on your home, and you are up to here with pie charts and hideous tables, then look no further. I am not the best Web designer in the world.

With a mix of shock and distraction, I see Sites each day that make me scratch my head and wonder. Thankfully though , there’s business out there for Web designers of varying talent levels, and though I am not building Sites for Fortune five hundred corporations, my local clients are OK with the completed product. But I do understand that baselining a siteknowing what’s working and what isn’tis crucial in making helpful suggestions to my clients. I know, too, that getting that info sometimes involves running log file info thru some program that spits out tables and numbers and, if you are truly fortunate, 3-D pie charts.

I have attempted different log file analyzers ( granted, most were of the ‘free’ variety ) and have gleaned some info, but always felt uncomfortable with the way the info was presented. I knew there had to be something better out there someone had to have put together a program for those among us who don’t writhe with pleasure at the idea of pie charts. A little concentrated looking on Google netted the jackpot. The product’s Web site , unlike others, listed the price right there on the front page : $495. I could likely make back this cost in one project. And the makers claimed that installation took about 10 mins, and the product could do amazing things.

I followed the prompts till I got to the point of finding my customer’s log file I couldn’t’ find this myself a fast call to the customer’s ISP revealed the non-standard nature of log files, and the heretofore secret locale of the log file often. What does this mean? It suggests I could show this to my customer and he would get it. I would like to see whether the Google visitors have an interest in our classes ( as we’re attempting to improve the classes’ ranking on that search engine ).

The results show the Google people are essentially, as a group, much more likely ( 53% ) to take a look at the classes and workshops page than users coming to the site from other referrers. Also, I showed it to another designer buddy of mine who asked where the pie charts were I assume that type of thing truly works for some folks. I am a right-brainer : my eyes glaze over at rows of numbers and charts. The visible interface of this program, with the tagging feature, and the power to put it on my credit card without maxing out my limit, makes it a worthwhile purchase in my book.