I really love the introduction of Netlify Analytics, and signed up - $9 / month is a totally reasonable cost IMO to get rid of that cookie banner. The only issue is, the current breakdowns of traffic are really only a start.
I would need enough granularity to provide at least a little better targeting for native ads. Specifically, I would need a full breakdown of referrals, slice traffic by country and device category, device OS / model / screen resolution, all with daily (or even hourly) resolution. And also some way to register conversions (I can do a GET request for a certain asset that is flagged as a conversion for example).
I mean basically, interview people who use Google Analytics and understand how and why they use it, and rebuild a lot of that in a tool that respects user privacy.
Hopefully y’all can get some of this stuff on the roadmap!
Pretty much everything you listed is on the roadmap. You should start seeing some of these things trickling out over the next few weeks with our next set of releases.
It is worth noting, though - we’re not necessarily trying to do everything that GA does - but we do want to know the things that are specifically valuable to our audience, which for the most part is developers, rather than marketeers or SEO folks, which GA targets.
Would it be possible to share this roadmap with the community some how? I’d be keen to know if enabling different time ranges was on it ( goes to this question Analytics only shows past month? ).
Hey! Sorry for the delay in getting back to you. At this time, there’s no plans for this but we’re always open to suggestions! I’ve added you to the feature request behind the scenes for showing data greater than 30 days.
I there anyway that I can download the log files so that I can pull out my own summaries? I have an analytics add-on subscription, but I am not getting all the info that I would like to see.
I am appreciative of Netlify serving up my site in such an easy and elegant way. And I am delighted to pay my monthly analytics subscription to avoid using Google analytics or the like to let them add to their surveillance. However the summaries from Netlify analytics fall short of the target.
Webalyzer has been around since the 1990’s, and AWStats was released around 2002. I don’t think it is any mystery about what people want in web analytics. But to be specific I would like to separate the crawlers from the real traffic, and I would like to get an idea about how long the visits are, and I would like to know how much mobile/small device traffic is coming in, I would like to know the referrers that generate the 404’s, and I would like to see the top hosts that are visiting.
Can you explain why getting access to logs is a “no-no”? Did I ask for something naughty or is there a technical limitation? Because I would think that my monthly analytics subscription fee should easily cover the cost for me to periodically download the log file so that I can process the data that I generate. If you are concerned that the volumes might be too high you could charge for log downloads by the megabyte.
I would like to separate the crawlers from the real traffic, and I would like to get an idea about how long the visits are, and I would like to know how much mobile/small device traffic is coming in, I would like to know the referrers that generate the 404’s, and I would like to see the top hosts that are visiting.
All very tangible and all very possible! We have an open feature request and I’ll add this feedback to it, for sure.
Can you explain why getting access to logs is a “no-no”?
The fact that IPs constitute PII make raw logs an absolute landmine. No technical limitations, nothing malicious in the request but I don’t believe we’ll be investing time in to making logs palatable, I’m afraid.
[…] so that I can process the data that I generate.
A lot of people are doing some clever things with the undocumented analytics API, y’know ! However, I do recognise that this would be more significant and valuable with the additional data as discussed earlier in your post .
Really appreciate the feedback and, should we learn more, you’ll hear more .
Netlify can’t be expected to “rebuild a lot of that” in some magical short time-frame.
These raw access logs are just one input into your metrics. You should also be running client-side analytics tools, either in anonymous mode or with a gdpr consent. Plenty of users never click the banner, so your client-side numbers are also… just another input into your metrics.
! However, I do recognise that this would be more significant and valuable with the additional data as discussed earlier in your post 
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