Urchin Software – major features

Urchin 7 is a web anlytics application with a long pedigree. It is the result of more than two years' development from Urchin 6 which itself was released after three years in the lab following the legendary Urchin 5 that incorporated seven years development from concept.

The product is, in our view, the web analytics package which presents one of the very best combinations of capability, value, ease of use and user acceptance. This combination of proven Enterprise-class performance with uncommon ease-of-use makes Urchin most often the best choice for businesses and hosting providers of all sizes.

Urchin is structured so that all the modules which were familiar even to Urchin 5 users are identifiable and supplied together under a single licence. Here we describe the functionality of the major components. From here, you can go on to get more detailed information about Urchin, including particular details about the new features of Urchin 7 which make it distinct from Urchin 6.

What’s new in Urchin 7?

Urchin base component

The Urchin Base component may be all that a medium-scale installation uses. It contains all of Urchin’s standard functions other than e-commerce tracking and campaign reporting, allows for up to 1,000 reporting profiles and has no restrictions on the number of server log-file sources to which it may be applied.

A Profile is a container for a set of rules governing the processing of log files and the production of reports. They may be thought of as folders for particular collections of reports and are convenient when groups of users need to have access to different collections of reports.

If an organisation wishes to set up more than 1,000 profiles, additional licences are required for each tranche of 1,000 profiles

Larger web sites are often served by more than one web-server in a load-balanced configuration. This is a particular instance of when Urchin must accommodate more than one log source. Urchin may be configured to accommodate multiple log file sources in such a way that it correctly associates the data when the multiple sources relate to a single domain.

E-commerce Reporting component

The E-commerce Reporting component contains the functionality to follow visitors all the way to the point of purchase and actually measure ROI relating to various aspects of a website and individual marketing campaigns. In connection with a shopping cart, you can analyze transactions and revenue by product and quantity. Revenue can be segmented and reported by referrals, search terms and domains. Buyers can be located and grouped by country, by state or even city.

The module works with the common e-commerce Log Formats ELF2 and ELF, or allows a custom format to be defined and used.

Campaign Tracking component

The Urchin Campaign Tracking component accurately tracks visitors from a source – such as a search engine or a link in an email piece – through to a conversion or transaction on your site. It shows which keywords, search engines, marketing campaigns and ad content lead to conversions so that marketing spend can be effectively targeted.

With the Urchin Campaign Tracking Module, you gain the benefits of:

Multi-Session Tracking – visitors can be tracked from lead to conversion across multiple sessions

ROI Analysis – the keywords that convert to purchases may be easily identified so that your paid search expenditure can be accurately targeted

Goal Conversion – actual purchases and similar events can be labelled as goals for verification and reporting

A/B Testing – the CTM supports testing of alternative content to identify which versions work in achieving goals

Day Parts Reporting – reporting can show when your target audience is away so that you can control the delivery of paid-search advertising and avoid wasting money

Multi-Dimensional Comparisons – performance comparisons can be made across marketing campaigns, advertising channels, e-mail shots, search engines, specific keywords, organic searches and more

More Urchin detail

Fundamentally, Urchin is a server-log analysis program, but its sophisticated unique visitor reporting goes far beyond what was otherwise available at the time when the first version was released.

Accurate visitor and session identification is performed by the Urchin Traffic Monitor. The UTM is a highly accurate system that is specifically designed to identify unique visitors, sessions, exact paths, and return frequency behaviour. The JavaScript page tags which are installed to communicate with the UTM also overcome the accuracy problems associated with page caching and the intervention of proxy servers.

Structure and functionality

Urchin consists of 4 primary components:

The Admin Server

The Log-processing and DNS resolution engine

The Visitor Interaction Data Architecture (VIDA) database

The Scheduler

The Admin Server is Urchin's central component. It is a web-based control panel system, powered by a customized Apache web server that controls all the other Urchin components. The Admin Server lets you access and control the Urchin system from any computer on the Internet (by turning on remote access and reporting).

The log-processing and DNS resolution engine does the “heavy lifting” in the Urchin system, converting large raw log files into meaningful data, translating IP addresses to domains, and entering the information into the VIDA database.

The VIDA system is a highly-specialized, optimized, proprietary database for quickly entering and extracting web analytics data. This analytics-specific database is a significant part of Urchin's speed advantage over the competition.

The Scheduler regularly checks the configuration database for scheduled tasks that need to be run, and executes Urchin to process them at their scheduled times.

The Urchin Reporting Interface

The Urchin Reporting Interface is the system that displays the actual Urchin reports. Users may access it by logging in to the Urchin Administration Interface and selecting a report to view. The Administrator has access to all reports. Users have access to those reports specified by the Administrator.

Each Urchin Profile that has been configured has its own set of reports. By clicking the magnifying glass icon next to a profile, a user can view the reports for that profile.

 Review Urchin’s features or download a trial copy

 Learn more about Urchin on Google's web site

Learn more about what’s new in Urchin 7

Contact ivantage to buy an Urchin licence or for more information