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Free Statistics Tracking Software for the Web If you have a web site on the Internet, are engaged in the business of ecommerce and you are not using some type statistical tracking of visitors and their activities, you are doing yourself a great disservice. Analytical add-ons to your web pages can and will provide you with a wealth of information which can help you better target your messages and convert to sales. It’s all accomplished through background activities that are always ‘watching’ your site. Once you employ the use of website analytics, you will never market haphazardly again. Where Can I Find It? You can obtain website analytical tools from any number of entities on the web. Probably the most popular is Google Analytics (www.google.com/analytics/). But there are also others such as Mint (www.haveamint.com), StatCounter (www.statcounter.com), eWebanalytics (www.ebebanalytics.com), Metasun (www.metasun.com), LoadStats (www.loadstats.com), WebTrends (www.webtrends.com), and ShinyStat (www.shinystat.com). There are also open source providers like Piwik (www.piwik.org), AWStats (awstats.sourceforge.net), and Webalizer (www.webalizer.org) just to name a few. What Does It Cost? You will also encounter differing prices which following loosely the amount and depth of data that is generated from your site. The ones that are gratis are good for small websites and businesses. The more detailed and all-encompassing will have a monthly fee attached. How Does It Work? Essentially, good website analytics acts like a compass which points you towards better web marketing activities which should mean more money in your pocket. With the information, for example, you can determine what key words are pulling customers and which ones are not. Also, these tools are very good at tracking visitor’s activities on a website. If you have multiple pages, you can discover what pages are being visited most often, and probably more importantly, how LONG the visitors stay. You can also see where they are going when they leave the site. All this information is captured in one of two ways. Either by what is known as a log file which is a server side activity report, or by page tagging which uses JavaScript on each page in order to notify a third party server when a page is accessed by an Internet browser. Which Is Better? Like most choices in life, there are advantages and disadvantages to both, and it is interesting to note that some web analytics companies will offer both methods. The log file approach is very precise in its measurements and logging activities. Since servers have always had the capability of logging changes in its environments, the data has always been available, but now has been turned into a very valuable commodity to the businesses using these servers (all web pages are stored on servers somewhere). Using the page tagging method has its advantages as well. It can report on activities that the log file method cannot, for example, if a user launches a Flash movie, or even other activities such as mouse movements. It also is responsible for generating the cookies that are stored on the client side (end users PC). What’s the Bottom Line? There are a lot more details that can be disseminated concerning the inner workings of this fascinating area, but suffice it to say that one does not have to be a guru to make use or understand all of it. In the end, website analytics is just a tool. Only those who use this tool to improve their website activities will benefit from its existence. |
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