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arp242 / goatcounter

Easy web analytics. No tracking of personal data.
https://www.goatcounter.com
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Support "Avg time on site" #382

Open azzamsa opened 4 years ago

azzamsa commented 4 years ago

Should we add "Avg time on site" feature?

My current use case is: I want to know is the reader read my (long) essays or just visit the link then close the tab. I want get the insight of how many of X views that really read the article.

Feature:

arp242 commented 4 years ago

Yeah, this one is already planned. I actually already have a design for it: https://github.com/zgoat/goatcounter/pull/292/files#diff-009d7872ac53678e4a69bd49a8f9dac9R26-R29

I'm currently working on a database refactor which makes certain things easier/faster (which is why I haven't merged that bounce rate PR yet), and I'll add this after that.

azzamsa commented 4 years ago

Yeah, this one is already planned.

Awesome!

Is this feature able to show "Avg time on site" for each visitor?. I saw some analytics app just showing it for total visitor.

arp242 commented 4 years ago

Initially it'll just be the totals for the page, as average (or maybe some more advanced numbers, as averages kind of suck).

I need to think about how to show anything per visitor, it's all aggregated right now. I'm not 100% sure how useful this would actually be off-hand. What is your use case for this?

azzamsa commented 4 years ago

I need to think about how to show anything per visitor, it's all aggregated right now. I'm not 100% sure how useful this would actually be off-hand. What is your use case for this?

I write essays, and I use GoatCounter to see how many visitors I got. But from the N visitors, I want to know who many of them complete the essays. By showing their average time on the essay page, I know is the reader read carefully, skim, or just see what inside-then close the tab.

I don't know if this feature would be useful for many. Initially, I would use heatmap apps, but none of them is FOSS, and they are famous for being flow and big. So, I choose to go with "average time with GoatCounter".

arp242 commented 4 years ago

Makasi :-) That kind of stuff is also the use case I have in mind for that. I think that just the aggregate/average stats should be good enough for that though? I don't think it needs to show anything for each visitor?

azzamsa commented 4 years ago

After comparing the feature of some app that you mentioned in docs/rationale.markdown. I'm very happy to have GoatCounter. Some (including me) indeed would be having a hard time managing "open source" business. But your decision to make GoatCounter open-source and have a free plan is a gift.

Donating to GoatCounter indeed is a high priority for me. My current situation makes me unable to do this. But I keep that in my mind, I hope I can donate/subscribe to my favorite open-source apps soon.

Some business sunsetting their free-option and decided to go with micro-plan. Such migadu.com that offer $19/yearly.

I hope You can earn a good amount of cash from GoatCounter. OpenSource doesn't mean take the app for granted.

Speaking of this feature. I look into 1) fathom, 2) plausible. I don't look for others since they didn't have a live demo.

1) fathom only had average time for total views.

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2) the same thing for plausible.

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Do you have any comments for matomo? They didn't have a live demo. So I can't see is this feature exists.

I don't know why they didn't provide the average time for each user. Or at least for each page. Is it difficult to implement, or just doesn't produce high benefit?

Makasi :-)

You are very humble. I've completed many of your blog articles. Also, I find the "find-cursor" project. Which is the app that I'm looking for a long time (didn't try it yet.).

Sorry if my reply contains so many OOT things. Inspired by your step to start open-source business. I'll keep an eye for GoatCounter.

arp242 commented 4 years ago

For GoatCounter I want to add it per-path; so for /hello.html you'll see something like "Average time: 1 minute", and for /other.html "Average time: 14 seconds", with maybe a popup which shows the time distribution in a simple chart or something like that.

For each user doesn't have too much benefit, I think.

I don't know why they didn't provide the average time for each user. Or at least for each page. Is it difficult to implement, or just doesn't produce high benefit?

I can't tell you that either haha; tools like Fathom and Plausible seem more oriented towards "site totals" rather than "path totals". I don't know why this decision was made, and it probably depends a lot on what kind of site you're using it on. A lot of sites are these "everything on one site" kind of things these days. I developed GoatCounter specifically for my own website/blog, where "site totals" are fairly useless, and "path totals" are much more useful, which is why GoatCounter's design is quite different in that respect.

Donating to GoatCounter indeed is a high priority for me. My current situation makes me unable to do this. But I keep that in my mind, I hope I can donate/subscribe to my favorite open-source apps soon.

Don't worry about it; the overhead of hosting small personal sites is basically nothing, and I have no problem people using it for free. Really, don't bend over backwards to donate or feel guilty for not donating. The idea is that most of the income should come from a fairly small set of high-volume customers.

Do you have any comments for matomo? They didn't have a live demo. So I can't see is this feature exists.

From what I remember they have this, but I don't recall the details exactly. It's been over a year since I last looked at it. In general, I found Matomo quite hard to use on my website and I never quite managed to get the data out of it that I wanted (it was recorded, but just wasn't able to display it nicely).

azzamsa commented 4 years ago

For each user doesn't have too much benefit, I think.

Agree. Showing avg time on each path is enough. IMHO, We can get an insight into how many people complete the article by using two available variables: 1) page views, and 2) avg time. But I don't have the formula yet.

where "site totals" are fairly useless, and "path totals" are much more useful, which is why GoatCounter's design is quite different in that respect.

I think I've chosen the right tool ;)

Don't worry about it; the overhead of hosting small personal sites is basically nothing, and I have no problem people using it for free. Really, don't bend over backwards to donate or feel guilty for not donating. The idea is that most of the income should come from a fairly small set of high-volume customers.

Would be very happy to see GoatCounter growings.

srijan commented 3 years ago

One alternative to averages which I think could be useful can be: count (or %) of visitors in different time spent buckets. For example:

Total visitors to: 200 Visitors who spent < 5s: 50 Visitors who spent 5s - 1m: 100 Visitors who spent 1m - 5m: 40 Visitors who spent > 5m: 10

Of course, the problem with this would be how to define good defaults for the buckets, and would we want to make it configurable per site?

sander1095 commented 10 months ago

HI @arp242 ! I'm curious, why did you remove the Planned label? I've been using Goatcounter for a while and I'm extremely happy with it.

Having the feature implemented in this issue would be amazing, though! I mostly write blog posts and I would love to be able to see how long people stay on the page. As long as this stays GDPR compliant, I'd love to have this.