Website Analytics(Google etc)

[Fern9do]

What are your views on website analytics?
Why should we use Google analytics if we have awstats?
I only came across this Google analytics when i saw a thread complaining about the load times in the forum feedback thread.

Are they a must for a good website and what real benefits do they give you?

 

[jpd]

Google Analytics are fundamentally different to a web stats application like awstats. AWStats calculates stats by reading the web server log files. Analytics uses code embedded in the pages that you want it to track. This is useful if you want to for example do goal conversion tracking - this is the process whereby tracking code is placed on a e-commerce site - google will track the behaviour of the visitor from browsing your products and proceeding through the shopping cart and checkout.

Goal Conversion is a hot topic right now - used in conjunction with adWords (Google sponsored links) Analytics is a very powerful tool.