Ways to Track Your Visitors
1. Counters – these are heavily used on web sites
by newbies but
appear unprofessional. It is very common to go to a page
and see
something like "You are visitor number 12345 to this
page".
These numbers cannot be trusted as the page designer has
the
ability to seed the base number or to alter the counter
such
that it adds more than 1 each time.
2. Trackers – tracking software details the path
a visitor takes
through your Website, so they do more than just count
your
traffic: they track it. Tracking software tells you more
than
just the number of visitors -- it can break visitor
statistics
down by date, time, browser, page viewed, referrer, and
countless other values.
Examples:
Hitbox
Sitemeter
Extreme-DM
Counters and Trackers often require you to place a
button or
graphic on your site in exchange for the free use of
their service,
which is not ideal for most site owners. So try to avoid
using
these services unless you don't have the ability or
expertise to
execute tracking scripts of any kind on your own
server.
3. Using Your ISP’s Statistical Package
Your Internet Service Provider (ISP) keeps log files
which record
every single "hit" (request for a Web page or graphic)
on your Web site.
Analyzing log data can give you a good idea of where
your site
visitors are coming from, which pages they are visiting,
how
long they stay, and which browsers they are using.
Before
signing on with a hosting company, make sure they offer
access
to raw log files. Even if you don't need them
immediately,
sooner or later you'll be glad to have them.
There are also different types of log files - access,
referrer,
error, and agent are the primary ones.
Here is a sample of a raw access log file entry:
Access log
Analyzing the access log will give you information
about who visited your site, which pages they visited,
and how
long they stayed on the site. This is useful information
in
determining whether or not your site is working as you
intend.
The record below shows the visitor's IP number or
hostname, date
and time of the request, the command received from the
client,
the status code returned, the size of the document
transferred,
and the browser and operating system the visitor was
using.
nas-112-52.slc.navinet.net - - [29/Jan/2000:17:17:12
-0500] "GET
page.html HTTP/1.1" 200 23443
"http://www.mydomain.com/page.html" "Mozilla/4.0
(compatible;
MSIE 5.01; Windows 98)"
Referrer Log
The referrer log contains referral information - the
source that
referred the visitor to your site. If the referrer was a
search engine,
you will also find the keywords that were entered to
find your
site - very useful information. Here are some example
records. The record
below shows that the visitor followed a link from
somedomain.com
to the index page of the site.
http://www.somedomain.com/page.html -> /
This record shows that the visitor came to my site from
a search
engine link. Notice the keyword data is included in the
record.
http://search.yahoo.com/bin/search?p=design+tips -> /
Agent Log
This log provides information on which browser and
operating
system was used to access your site.
Mozilla/4.0 (compatible;MSIE 5.01; Windows 98)
Error Log
The error log obviously provides a record of errors
generated
by the server and sent back to the client. The record
below shows
the type of server, date and time of the error, client
identification,
explanation of the error code generated by the server,
and the path to the
file that caused the error.
apache: [Sun Jan 30 10:09:57 2000][error] [client
195.238.2.162]
File does not exist:/u/mydomain/favicon.ico
As you can see, log files contain a wealth of
information about
how your visitors are using your site. Now we will talk
about how
you get the relevant data extracted from the log files
and compiled
into a useable format.
4. Web Traffic Analysis Software
These are programs that analyze your server logs and
then create
traffic reports accordingly. The quality of the reports
generated will
depend on what software you actually use. Some log
analyzers are
free and come preinstalled on many hosting accounts,
while others
can cost a good deal of money.
Examples:
Webalizer
WebTrends
Webalizer (free)
The Webalizer is a fast, FREE, web server log file
analysis
program which produces usage statistics in HTML format
for viewing with a standard web browser. The results are
presented in both columnar and graphical format, which
facilitates interpretation. Yearly, monthly, daily and
hourly
usage statistics are presented, along with the ability
to
display usage by site, URL, referrer, user agent
(browser),
search string, entry/exit page, username and country.
Here's an example of the Web Usage Statistics:
http://www.webalizer.com/sample/index.html
WebTrends ($495)
The Web Trends Analyzer produces essential reports on
web site visitor patterns, referring sites, visitor
paths and
demographics. You can learn, for example, which sites
and keyword searches have referred the largest number of
visitors to your site.
It presents data, detailed and in-depth, in an organized
and
concise tabular format with full-color graphs.
This Log Analyzer is priced at $495 and is licensed for
a single
web server hosting content with a maximum of 50
domains.
Conclusion
Web traffic statistics provide very valuable information
about your
web site. You can make better marketing decisions
through them
telling you:
- Which Web pages are most popular and which are
least used.
- Who is visiting your Web site.
- Which Web browsers to optimize your Web pages
for.
- Which Web search engines are most useful to you,
and which are the least useful.
- Where errors or bad links may be occurring in
your Web pages.
Web traffic analysis allows you to determine what
marketing
strategies are successful, then to change them
accordingly, to
boost your web traffic and sales.
==================================================
Herman Drost is a Certified Internet Webmaster (CIW)
owner and author of
iSiteBuild.com
Low Cost Hosting and Site Design
(with FREE comprehensive web traffic analysis)
Subscribe to the “Marketing Tips” newsletter for more
original
articles.
subscribe@isitebuild.com
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Understanding
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Understanding Your Website's Traffic Statistics
If you want to know how much traffic is coming to
your site, which pages are bringing the most traffic,
where are your visitors coming from, and when is traffic
coming in, you just have to analyze your website's
statistics.
Nowadays, most web hosts utilize Webalizer, a powerful
program that processes your raw traffic logs (long, text
based files with information about your traffic), and
generates meaninful reports presented in the form of
easy to understand graphs and tables. Other hosts may
use different traffic anaylis tools, but they all work
and present the information in a similar fashion.
We'll show you, step by step, how your web site
statistics can answer almost any question you may have
about your traffic:
How much traffic is coming to my site?
The two most important parameters are:
a) Number of Visitors
b) Number of Page Views
The Number of Visitors shows you how
many users come to your site and request a page. The
visitor can move around your site visiting several
pages, however he will still be counted as only one
visitor. An exception to this rule occurs in the rare
occasion when a visitor takes more than half an hour (or
the amount of time set by your host) to click from one
page to another, in which case the program will register
two visitors.
The Page Views parameter indicates how
many pages have been requested. It is a very important
number because it is indicative of the "stickiness" of
your site. Stickiness is a good thing: if, for example,
your statistics show 10 visitors, but 50 page views, it
means that, on average, each visitor has viewed 5 pages.
A large "page views per visitor" ratio usually means
that your site is so interesting and valuable that users
are inclined to "stick around" and explore.
Other somehow important parameter, especially if you
have bandwidth restrictions, is the Kilobytes
Transmitted. Sites with a lot of pictures, or
sites that allow downloads (reports, ebooks, audio files
or video) will incur in significant bandwidth usage. If
you operate a plain HTML site but still show an
abnormally high bandwidth usage, you may need to
optimize your images to make them less heavy.
Finally, a less important measure (although it was
heavily hyped in the early days of the web) is the
number of Hits. Hits represent the
number of files sent to a user after a page request. If
a page has 30 pictures, one sigle visit will trigger 31
hits: thirty for the pictures and one for the page
itself.
Through where on my site is traffic coming in?
You may be interested in knowing which pages of your
site are bringing in the most traffic, since not every
visitor will come through your home page.
Your traffic statistics will show you a list of the most
popular entry pages to your site, ranked by number of
requests. Sometimes, internal pages can bring in more
traffic than the homepage itself. This may happen when
a particular internal page is very well
optimized and regularly shows up at the top of the
search engine results pages (SERPs), or when it offers
such good content that other sites link directly to it.
You will also find a list of the most common exit pages
(the last page your users visited prior to leaving your
site).
How is traffic coming in?
Your traffic statistics will show you a list of
referrers. Referrers are those URLs
that lead a user to your site. Referrers are ranked by
the number of hits they produce. That is why the vast
majority of referrers will be URLs from your own site
(since HTML pages usually contain embedded links to
other objects such as graphics files, they generate a
large number of hits). However, if you filter out your
own pages, you will see what external URLs are bringing
in visitors to your pages.
External referrers generally fall into two categories:
- pages that have posted a link to your site, and
- search engine referred traffic.
You will also find an entry in your referrer list
named "Direct Request"; it shows you
the number of times somebody accessed your pages by
either directly typing your URL in the address bar, by
using a bookmark or by following a link on an email
message.
Analyzing your traffic statistics will also tell you
what keywords are your visitors using to find your pages
through search engines. This is extremely important
since it will tell you if your selected keywords are
working or not. It may also bring to your attention
keywords that you may have not thought about. You may
then use those keywords to further optimize your pages
and bring in even more traffic.
When is traffic coming in?
You can also find out when are visitors coming to
your site. You will find statistics by month, by day and
even by hour. This can be useful in a variety of
circumstances. For example, if you publish new content,
you may want to release it during the moments of more
traffic. Your statistics will help you by identifying
the days or hours when more people are likely to visit
your site.
Finally, you will also have access to other interesting
data, like the IP addresses of your visitors, the
browsers they are using, and even the countries they are
coming from.
Altogether, the information you gather from your
website's traffic statistics will provide you with a
wealth of valuable insights, so that you can
continuously fine tune your internet marketing strategy
to bring more traffic to your site.
You can
freely reprint this article provided that you include
the following resource box:
Mario Sanchez is a Miami based freelance writer who
focuses on web design and Internet marketing topics. He
publishes The Internet Digest (
http://www.theinternetdigest.net
), a growing collection of web design and Internet
marketing articles, tips and resources. You can freely
reprint his weekly articles in your website, ezine, or
ebook.
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