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Jimco Software Reviews - SurfStats Log Analyzer Professional 8.0 (continued)
Jimco Software Reviews - SurfStats Log Analyzer Professional 8.0 (continued)
The Interface
The main SurfStats Log Analyzer (hereafter referred to as SLA) interface is fairly straightforward. Along the left edge (as shown in figure 1), there are a series of menu items that allow you to perform common tasks. The large area that makes up the rest of the main interface consists of the profiles you have created. Each profile contains unique settings for a particular Web site and reports are generated based upon that profile.
Figure 1 - The Main Interface in SurfStats Log Analyzer Professional
There are plenty of options available when setting up your profile as shown in figure 2. However, many of them are not intuitive, and help is non-existent here. In fact, if you hit F1 to try and get help, you're presented with the dialog shown in figure 3. It's unbelievable to me that a product that costs almost $500 would have such a poorly implemented help system.
Figure 2 - Editing a Profile : Not easy without help!
Figure 3 - The Help system is not very helpful in this case.
I was able to actually get to the help system from the main dialog's Help menu, but it wasn't much help. When creating a new profile, I was presented with a confusing Conversion Tracking dialog (see figure 4). I searched in online help and was able to find documentation on a Conversion Tracking feature, but it was completely different than what I was seeing. When I contacted SurfStats about this, they said that the documentation I was referring to must be old and outdated documentation. I was amazed at that response since the documentation I was using was the documentation that ships with their product!
Figure 4 - Conversion Tracking : Looks cool, but there's zero documentation!
Notice that there is a large Tracking button in this dialog that looks like it might provide some enlightenment. Not so. It simply display a Windows dialog that provides a brief definition of two different tracking techniques. I was able to finally figure out this feature, but it took me a while to do it.
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