If you are serious about building a website and getting a decent amount of traffic then you need to set up some service to analyse the visitors to the site and generate charts for you. By doing this you will know who your visitors are, where they come from, what they do on your site and how they found you. Having this information at your fingertips is key to building a successful website.
What Statistics Package Should I use?
There are two different ways that statistics can be recorded on your website. One way is through logfiles and the other way is through webpage tagging. Both can be effective and both can be used if desired. There are a few inaccuracies that can be found with both, so really it’s just a matter of choosing which works best for you and then using the other type as a comparison.
LogFile Analysis
Logfile analysis is typically done server side. Each time a visitor or spider accesses your website a logfile is appended which records the IP address of the visitor, where they came from, what they viewed, what browser they used, how long they spent on the site and what pages they viewed and much more. However, looking at one of these plain text logfiles can be baffling. Luckily, there is plenty of software around which can analyse those logfiles at a specific time or times each day and present the information in easy to understand numbers and graphical form. One very popular logfile analysis package is AWstats which is a simple to install package (done through a hosting control panel). Once installed and left for a few hours you will begin to see statistics at a specific URL which the control panel will provide. Once logged in to the stats you can see the large overview of what is happening on your site and what direction the traffic is travelling (increasing or decreasing).
Page Tagging
If you prefer not to use the LogFile Analysis method then another option is page tagging. Page tagging works different in that it does not use your logfiles to gather information about a visitor. Page tagging uses a tag, usually towards the bottom of each page, which can record information about a user as they visit your site. This method is used by SiteMeter and Google Analytics as well as other companies and can also provide fairly accurate information about visitors to your website. Reporting is similar in that it can show graphs of the day, week, month and year so that you can see if traffic is on the increase or decline.
Problems with LogFile Analysis and Page Tagging
When using statistics packages it is important to remember that they are not 100% accurate. One example is AWStats and it’s list of robots. Robots are what search engines send out to crawl your site and enter information in to search engines about your site. If you use an older version of software then a robot might not be recognized by the analysis software and then marked down as a visitor. This can then make the software show more visitors to your site then there actually are. This can effect both types of stats analysers. Make sure you choose a good company to go with.
A disadvantage of page tagging is that you need to enter code on every page of your site. If you use a template this is quite easy as you can place it in the footer. However, if you have 100′s or 1000′s of individual pages then this could be a tedious job.
Conclusion
I personally find it is best to use 2 or 3 stats packages. I tend to use SiteMeter, AWStats and Google Analytics. I stick with one and gauge the sites growth from there. If I want to drill down deeper to each individual day then Google Analytics offers the best solution. However, if you just want to quick snapshot of what’s what then SiteMeter or AWStats is ideal for you. All are free for usage, so adding all 3 is a good way to go.