| So you've got your new website up and running and | | | | Analog, AWStats and Webalizer. Part of the reason |
| you've done some advertising to get people to visit. | | | | they're so popular is because they are all free. |
| How do you know whether they're actually coming | | | | What Do You Really Need to Know? |
| or not? | | | | These stats programs give you all kinds of interesting |
| Most web hosting plans include some sort of | | | | information about your website traffic, but not all of |
| statistics package. This software will tell you all kinds | | | | it is really that important. |
| of information about your visitors, not just how | | | | For example, they will all show you the number of |
| many you're getting. | | | | hits your website has received. Hits are a little |
| All visitors coming to your website get logged by | | | | misleading though - they're not the number of people |
| your web server. They automatically create log files | | | | visiting your site. |
| with information like your visitors' origin (their IP | | | | Hits are actually requests for files, so every single file |
| address), what browser software they're using, the | | | | that gets requested logs 1 hit. If you home page has |
| pages they looked at, how long they stayed on your | | | | 6 images and 2 include files, your stats software will |
| site, whether they arrived by clicking a link from a | | | | register 9 hits every time that page gets loaded (1 |
| search engine and if so, they keywords they used | | | | for the page itself, 6 for the images and 2 for the |
| when running the search. | | | | includes). |
| The trouble with these log files is they're practically | | | | Some of the more important stats to look at include: |
| impossible to make sense out of. They're really just | | | | - Number of visits |
| long lists of numbers and words that are very cryptic | | | | - Page views (you can use this to see which pages |
| and hard for the average person to decipher. | | | | are most popular) |
| Statistics software will take these hard-to-understand | | | | - Popular entry and exit pages |
| logs and convert them into a format that is easy for | | | | - Referring sites |
| the average person to understand. Most of them will | | | | - Referring keywords, if referred from a search |
| create both reports and charts to show you what | | | | engine |
| your visitors are doing on your site. | | | | By tracking these stats and tweaking things that are |
| Statistics programs are included with most hosting | | | | related to them you can improve your site's success |
| plans. There are a few different ones available, so it | | | | with your visitors, whether that means more sales, |
| will depend on your host, but they're usually accessed | | | | staying on the site longer, more people signing up for |
| through the control panel for your website. | | | | your email newsletter, or anything else. |
| Three of the most popular stats packages are | | | | |