You can use web controlling services like Google Analytics or Webtrends to track visitors with some restrictions. Internet Explorer Mobile on PDAs and Smartphones for example supports JavaScript and therefore Google Analytics or WebTrends will capture those users of your mobile site. Other mobile browsers also support JavaScript.

Thanks for your reply. In another thread on this forum titled "Java Script compatibility", Ronan Cremin writes: "You can't really rely on Javascript for this function (few browsers support it) and actually this is recommended against specifically in the Switch On! Guide and the W3C best practices." In this context he's referring to a javascript redirect, but I wonder if the "few browsers support it" applies to javascript in general?

Does anyone have any stats on how widely javascript is supported in mobile browsers? How much of an audience am I excluding from our data by using it to track visitors?

Again, we can try using more traditional, log-based stats tools but I wonder how they handle a "visit" for instance. Do mobile browsers send IP addresses? Are mobile user-agents reported reliably to the web server?

Anyone else have thoughts?

New Symbian and Windows Mobile supports javascript,
but I won't use it for tracking.

A simple solution:

• Use a more traditional log-based stats tool with the incoming user-agent.
• If you want to translate the user-agents into human readable informations, use WURFL in your reporting view.
• The remote IP is often the gateway IP, so you can't use it for tracking visits.
• Create a session in your application to handle visits.

Are mobile user-agents reported reliably to the web server?

Yes

I've just installed TraceWatch (www.tracewatch.com) on my .mobi site (www.startmobiel.mobi) and it works perfectly!

The big advantage is that it doesn't require javascript. It runs on php. You will have to install the program yourself. Installation under 5 minutes.

I've seen a few of these type of posts around the web, I recommend mobileSTATS (mobilestats.co.uk) its a stat counter designed for .mobi websites and websites designed for mobile phone access. Simply to use and install, I think its great.
In short, it tracks PC and mobile phone users accessing your site (without using javascript).
You can view your stats on PC and even your mobile phone using their mobilestats.mobi portal.
They also do a javascript version for conventional domains so that you can view your stats using your mobile.

Amethon has developed a mobile specific analytics solution called (drum roll), Mobile Analytics!

As well as reporting a number of mobile specific metrics such as handset brand and model, handset screen resolution and mobile operators, it also has mobile specific logic to distinguish mobile activity from PC browsing and optimise the unique visitor identification process which is a signficant challenge in the mobile domain.

You can find out more here.

Cheers,

Michael Stone
www.amethon.com

Bango also have a mobile analytics tool!

Ruadhan O'Donoghue
dotMobi

Mobilytics is a fully hosted mobile web site analytics package that does not require Javascript or a dedicated server.

As Ronan pointed out, desktop analytics will not work correctly. Also, they will not provide you with information you need to actually take ACTION on your mobile site.

Mobile Analytics need to do more than just give you the correct count of visitors. There needs to be the ability to actually track and analyze metrics related to actual carriers, handset models, features and capabilities. You also need to filter out web crawlers and desktop browsers.

For example, you might want to know how many visitors with a specific model phone purchase a product or requested information. You might want to know what percentage of your visitors have full QWERTY keyboards on their phones.

None of the desktop analytics packages will tell you this.

Mobilytics was built from the ground up specifically for mobile.

We are in private beta. If anyone is interested in an invite, go to http://www.mobilytics.net.

--------------------------------------------------------
Mobile Visions, Inc
212 Carnegie Center, Princeton NJ 08540
877-659-0629 ext 84

http://www.mobilemarketing.net

Do-it-yourself mobile marketing and sms so

-----------------------------------------------
Mobile Visions, Inc
212 Carnegie Center, Princeton NJ 08540
877-659-0629 ext 84

http://www.mobilemarketing.net

Do-it-yourself mobil

We recently did a survey of mobile web site owners. Less than 40% came back as PHP developed sites.

Greg

--------------------------------------------------------
Mobile Visions, Inc
212 Carnegie Center, Princeton NJ 08540
877-659-0629 ext 84

http://www.mobilemarketing.net
http://www.mobilytics.net

Do-it-yourself mobile marketing and sms so

-----------------------------------------------
Mobile Visions, Inc
212 Carnegie Center, Princeton NJ 08540
877-659-0629 ext 84

http://www.mobilemarketing.net

Do-it-yourself mobil

mobileSTATS (http://mobilestats.co.uk) can work with ASP (vbscript) also.

Elias Giannopoulos

Elias Giannopoulos

http://mobilestats.ro will be open to free registration!

http://startech.ro

You can try http://analytics.admob.com/

I am currently testing 2 on my site (Mobile Movie Database) concurrently:

http://mobilytics.net/ and http://bango.com/

Site only went live on 1st of this month, and I only switched bango on today.
Will be interesting to see how they compare.

TBH: I think Amethon's solution looks the best,
I am just worried how scalable it is over a distributed server setup...
and it costs money - the others have free solutions for the moment at least..

All,

We've officially taken Mobilytics out of beta, and believe we have emerged as the most accurate mobile analytics tool available.

Feel free to evaluate Mobilytics, and even run us side-by-side with some competitors to see some incredible differences in what everyone is reporting.

We have a free version, which includes access to some of our paid features for 45 days.

I look forward to any feedback!

Greg

http://www.mobilytics.net

--------------------------------------------------------
Mobile Visions, Inc
212 Carnegie Center, Princeton NJ 08540
877-659-0629 ext 84

http://www.mobilemarketing.net

Do-it-yourself mobile marketing and sms so

-----------------------------------------------
Mobile Visions, Inc
212 Carnegie Center, Princeton NJ 08540
877-659-0629 ext 84

http://www.mobilemarketing.net

Do-it-yourself mobil