So, who's been visiting your website lately?
What do you mean you don't know? How can you tell
what's working if you don't have some sort of
tracking in place? Measuring website traffic,
also known as "stats," is how you know who's visiting your
site, where they're coming from, how long they
stay, entry and exit pages and more.
You need this information to make informed decisions
about your site. You can use it to understand your
guests' buying patterns and to measure the effectiveness
of your marketing and promotional strategies. It can
also be used to show you which
areas of your site are the most popular and the
pages no one seems to visit. You can use this information
to redesign your site and play-up the popular
pages while eliminating the ones no one views.
So how do you get this valuable information?
There are a number of ways to collect stats on your
website. You can:
1) Purchase Software
2) Use a Free Online Service
3) Use a Paid Online Service/ Third Party Auditors
4) Use your own Web Host
Let's take each option one by one. First in
the group of choices is buying stats software. The problem with
this option is the hefty price tag. Most of
the good ones don't come cheap.
Webtrends.com - http://www.webtrends.com
The leader in stats software, they offer
a variety of solutions for everyone from the small
business owner to large corporations. Prepare to shell
out some big bucks depending on your needs. Visit the
site and download a trial copy.
Websitereporter.com - http://www.websitereporter.com
Professional website stats software with many options.
Website Reporter 3.0 offers a free demo and runs on Unix
or NT and only costs between 50 to 75.00. Tracks total hits,
maximum hits and date, report traffic, top entry and exit
pages and much more.
Fast Stats - http://www.mach5.com/fast/
At only 99.00, this one is in everyone's price range.
Tells you who's visiting your site and does it
very quickly. Includes a hyperlinked tree view
report that graphically shows how visitors are
moving through your site. Runs only on Win 95,98,
or NT, but can analyze log files generated by
Unix servers.
Openwebscope.com - http://www.openwebscope.com
Free to download and 69.00 to register. Easy to read
charts and graphs tell you in an instant what visitors
are doing on your site. View sample reports at the site
to get a feel for what the software can do.
Now let's take a look at your options when it
comes to free stats. Many sites offer free
stats in exchange for placing a small banner or
button on your pages. Many of them are really good if you don't
mind the small graphic.
Freestats.com - http://www.freestats.com
Free Stats is free and easy to use. The downfall is the code
they give you inserts a banner on the pages you wish to track.
They do offer a "gold" service that eliminates the banners
for only 5.95 a month.
Thecounter.com - http://www.thecounter.com
The Counter supplies in-depth traffic reports. Tracks the
number of visitors, referrers, browsers, and more.
Simple to use add a few lines of HTML to your pages and
you're good to go.
Stattrack.com - http://www.stattrack.com
Stat Track is more then just a counter; you get detailed
information about your web guests. To use it you will
have to tolerate a small 88X31 button on your tracked
pages. Sign up, paste the code and you're done.
Now, let's move on to third
party or pay stats services. Third party means another
server collects and tabulates your website traffic, not
the server your site is hosted on.
Professional SuperStats-
http://v2.superstats.com/serviceoptions.html
Offers advanced real time tracking and historical
reporting on site traffic. Not software, it's easy to
set up. The tracking code is invisible to your
site visitors, no banners or buttons. You can
also export the data to MS Word, Excel or PDF
format for further analyzing. Only 19.95 per month
or 200.00 US dollars for the year.
Bondsmith.com - http://www.bondsmith.com
Provides traffic measurements and third party auditing
services to website owners. Excellent for proving traffic
patterns to potential advertisers. Sign up and get your
first month for free.
Site Gauge - http://www.sitegauge.com/reports.htm
Offering a free service, but you have to show banners
on your site. For only 19.95 a month for up to
20,000 page views I'd go with the Pro service.
It's invisible on your site and the stats collected
are really in-depth. You can also request that the
stats be e-mailed to you daily.
The last and final option is your web host. Some
web hosts will be able to supply you with stats
but not all of them. You'll have to ask yours if they
do and if there is any charge involved. Usually they
supply you with this information for free as an add-on to
you hosting service, but I have seen some that charge
a small fee for access. Make a point to ask, as many
of them won't point it out to you otherwise.
There you have it, stats in a nut shell. By analyzing
your website statistics you'll be able to make more
informed decisions and know what's working and who's
visiting your site. The breadcrumbs are there....
do you have a system in place to find them?
About the Author
Merle's Cyber Promotions http://www.mcpromotions.com/
"Creating Visibility Online for Small Businesses"
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