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> Just use GoAcces for fuck's sake. You don't need more than access logs. What are you going to do with that analytics data anyway? How much can you even trust
by sofixa 3y ago
> Just use GoAcces for fuck's sake. You don't need more than access logs. What are you going to do with that analytics data anyway? How much can you even trust that it's real and not bots that are getting better every day?
I can provide you a very simple example. You have a blog, with articles. On a multi-thousand word article, you know that traffic that spent <30 seconds on it are either bots or people that didn't read through. If that's most of your traffic, your articles aren't very good or your introductions suck. If almost all mobile traffic is like that, your site probably looks bad on small screens.
You get the point, I hope. Access logs are useless for this kind of basic information.
Another very good example - there was a blog from someone involved in the UK GDS initiative, that described the case of a woman sitting with a handheld console in the waiting room of a government office. Initially you think she's just playing, but peeking over her shoulder, you see she's filling an application for unemployment. The browser on the handheld is horribly outdated, but she probably doesn't have another choice. Therefore knowing your audience, and adapting to it is crucial. From them:
> people now access GOV.UK in many different ways - 16,500 visits came from games consoles in the last month (Xboxes/PlayStations/Nintendos) - including 65 sessions from a handheld Nintendo 3DS
(this is in 2015 https://gds.blog.gov.uk/2015/11/20/2-billion-and-counting/ https://gds.blog.gov.uk/2015/11/20/2-billion-and-counting/)
It entirely depends on what your website is doing if you need analytics or not. But a lot of orgs and people actually do, and can and should make use of them.
- account42 3y agoYou don't need analytics to know that you should build a responsive website and use best practices to keep it resource usage small enough for old devices.
- sofixa 3y ago> You don't need analytics to know that you should build a responsive website You do need to know if you have users using their fridge's custom browser developed by some intern long since retired in 2012 that doesn't support HTML5 properly and needs weird hacks to actually be responsive. > resource usage small enough for old devices Which can prevent you from adding new features, or even just video in good quality which can choke an old device's browser. Graceful degradation is nice, and should be preferred whenever possible, but sometimes not possible. So knowing how many, and if any, of your users are using such things you have to go out of your way to support, is important.
- radlad 3y agoI don't think the Nintendo DS / handheld gaming device comments were about keeping resource usage small. Outdated browsers don't support all the same APIs that the ones today do. Typically, businesses will choose a cutoff that supports most traffic they receive from their users. Without analytics, you can't determine this cutoff. It varies wildly from product to product.
- joshyi 3y agoWhile JS analytics may suit the needs of marketing professionals concerned with product sales and article visibility, those focused on precise traffic patterns, like daily devops, find GoAccess to be a more effective tool. JS analytics face an escalating risk of inaccuracies due to the myriad ways data can be manipulated, resulting in the generation of unreliable events from JavaScript endpoints. Keeping up with the industry reveals an emerging trend of blockers using AI-driven detection, diminishing the relevance of JavaScript analytics in such scenarios.