Ajax Metrics

Lightweight usage statistics for Web 2.0 sites

Ajax Metrics Project

Other Projects

Goals

Priority 1:

  1. Site owners can easily add usage tracking to their websites. The javascript should be very small, easy to install, and with minimal external dependencies.
  2. Site owners can analyze the generated statistics through a powerful web interface.
  3. Server side interface that is completely independent of the client language. This will enable statistics gathering for Flash applications - not just JavaScript apps - within the same framework. Thanks to Theo Hultberg for suggesting this!
  4. Tracking of repeat visitors (through cookies). If a user has come in the second time, recognize that it's the same user, and report statistics for them accordingly.

Priority 2:

Site statistics can be exported (as CSV) for more in-depth analysis in Excel or other analytical package.

Priority 3:

Site statistics can be viewed through a (password-protected?) RSS feed.

Non-Goals

AjaxMetrics will explicitly not support any kind of IP-based user tracking.

IP tracking is evil: it exposes the user identity in conjunction with very intimate application usage details (i.e. misspellings, search strings, login times). It has legal concerns: what if the site owner didn't notify the users in the privacy policy that their information will be tracked? We shouldn't do this.