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Sawmill Newsletter

April 25, 2011



Welcome to the Sawmill Newsletter!

 You're receiving this newsletter because during the downloading or purchase of Sawmill, you checked the box to join our mailing list. If you wish to be removed from this list, please send an email, with the subject line of "UNSUBSCRIBE" to newsletter@sawmill.net (please include the entire message, as the identifying information is at the bottom).


News

Sawmill 8.5 beta 3 is now available. This is the first public beta of Sawmill 8.5, the next major version of Sawmill, expected to ship in June. You can download Sawmill 8.5b3 from http://sawmill.net/download.html . Please keep in mind that this is beta software—it will have bugs and performance issues which will be resolved by the final 8.5 release. This is not suitable for production use (use 8.1.8 instead), but if you'd like to see what's coming, and give us feedback, you can try the beta.

Sawmill 8.1.8 shipped on January 17, 2011. This is a bug-fix release—it fixes a few bugs, and adds a few small features. This release is free to existing Sawmill 8 users. This release is recommended for anyone experiencing the issues described in the version history. You can download Sawmill 8.1.8 from http://sawmill.net/download.html .

Sawmill 7 users can upgrade to Sawmill 8 for half of the license price; or if you have Premium Support, the upgrade is free. Major features of Sawmill 8 include support for Oracle and Microsoft SQL Server databases, real-time reporting, a completely redesigned web interface, better multi-processor and multi-core support, and role-based authentication control.

This issue of the Sawmill Newsletter gives a specific example of the use of snapons, a new feature of the upcoming Sawmill 8.5, to display and graph bounce rates in web site analysis.


Get The Most Out Of Sawmill With Professional Services

Looking to get more out of your statistics from Sawmill? Running short on time, but need the information now to make critical business decisions? Our Professional Service Experts are available for just this situation and many others. We will assist in the initial installation of Sawmill using best practices; work with you to integrate and configure Sawmill to generate reports in the shortest possible time. We will tailor Sawmill to your environment, create a customized solution, be sensitive to your requirements and stay focused on what your business needs are. We will show you areas of Sawmill you may not even be aware of, demonstrating these methods will provide you with many streamlined methods to get you the information more quickly. Often you'll find that Sawmill's deep analysis can even provide you with information you've been after but never knew how to reach, or possibly never realized was readily available in reports. Sawmill is an extremely powerful tool for your business, and most users only exercise a fraction of this power. That's where our experts really can make the difference. Our Sawmill experts have many years of experience with Sawmill and with a large cross section of devices and business sectors. Our promise is to very quickly come up with a cost effective solution that fits your business, and greatly expand your ROI with only a few hours of fee based Sawmill Professional Services. For more information, a quote, or to speak directly with a Professional services expert contact consulting@flowerfire.com.


Tips & Techniques: Tracking Bounce Rate Using A Snapon In Sawmill 8.5

Sawmill 8.5, currently in beta, includes a major new feature called "snapons." Snapons are components which can be attached to a profile, or detached from a profile, and which add functionality to the profile. Snapons are a very general technology, and can be used to make almost any change to a profile, including adding fields (log, database, or report fields), adding log filters, adding database filters (see below), adding reports, or other operations. Snapons can be attached or detached from a profile even after the database has been built, and do not require a rebuild.

Another new feature of Sawmill 8.5 is Database Filters. These are similar to Log Filters, but operate directly on the main table of the database, after the logs have been parsed, rather than during parsing like log filters. Because Database Filters do not require log data for their operation, they can be run against an existing database without re-parsing the logs. Snapons often, though not always, use database filters to perform their calculations.


How To Use The Bounce Rate Snapon

Though the Bounce Rate Snapon is implemented with a complex multi-layer method involving multiple snapons and filters, the use of it is very straightforward. Simply go to Config -> Snapons, and choose Bounce Rate, then click Attach Snapon:



Click Yes to attach the Bounce Rate snapon:




And keep the default values on the snapon parameters page (which tells the snapon to use the Sessions field as the denominator when computing the bounce rate; i.e., bounces divided by sessions):




Finally, use the default name for the Bounce Rate snapon instance:



and click Finish to attach the snapon. After modifying the profile appropriately to do the Bounce Rate calculation, the snapon will modify the database by adding and running the database filter, adding a new column to the database and computing its value for each existing event. This can take a while for a large database, since it's examining and modifying every event in the database; the time required is similar to (though typically less than) the time required for a database build. When it's done, the database will have been updated with all necessary modifications, and it will immediately be ready to generate reports with the new information.

So now the Days report will show Bounces and Bounce Rate:





A key point: Sawmill does not need to re-process the log data to make this sort of profile modification. It works directly on the database. This makes it faster than a full database rebuild, and also eliminates the need, in some cases, to have the log data available (though it is still strongly recommended that the log data be kept available, for situations where a database rebuild is required).

How It Works

This section discusses the internal implementation of the Bounce Rate snapons. Again, this is part of a new plug-in architecture of Sawmill, so new snapons can be implemented by anyone with Salang programming experience. Sawmill 8.5 will ship with a number of snapons; others will be added in future minor releases. Eventually, we expect to have a large library of useful snapons, implementing all sorts of profile customization and enhancement.

The included Bounces snapon, when attached, adds a new database field, "bounces" which tracks the number of bounces in the dataset (a bounce is a session event which is both an exit and and entry page; i.e., it is a visit which is immediately left after hitting only one page). This field is calculated using a database filter. The Bounces snapon also adds the Bounces column to every report, and to every xref table.

The included Bounce Rate snapon, when attached, adds a new report field, "bounce rate," which shows the ratio of bounces to sessions (the bounce rate). It does this using a third included snapon, the generic "Report Field Ratio" snapon, which computes the ratio of two specified fields using a custom report field. (Incidentally, the number of sessions is also now computed with a snapon, the Sessions snapon).

So, when the Bounce Rate snapon is attached, it attaches the Bounces snapon, and then the Report Field Ratio snapon to compute the bounce ratio, and adds the field to the Overview, and as a columns of all other reports.


Other Snapons

Snapons, like log format plug-ins, are text files, and can be created by anyone with scripting experience (Salang and CFG). Several examples are included. Written in a combination of Sawmill's CFG format and Sawmill's Salang language, snapons are highly flexible, and can be used to implement almost any kind of profile modification or calculations. As of 8.5b3, there are only a handful of snapons implemented, including the Sessions snapon (which implements the traditional sessions analysis, and incidentally allows multiple parallel sessions analysis in a single profile), and the Bounce Ratio snapon described above, and other useful snapons; including Two-Stage Goal, which can do goal analysis; and Particular File Access, which can be used to track the number of downloads/accesses to a particular page.


Professional Services

This newsletter describes the use of a the Bounce Rate snapon. If you need assistance with this snapon, or with other snapons, or creating a custom snapon, our Sawmill Experts can help. Contact sales@sawmill.net for more information.



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