Understand Your Web Site Traffic
Maintaining a business Web site can be useful in ways you might not expect. Each time a user visits your site they're giving you valuable insight into both the site itself and your business in general. If you have software installed to track and analyze peoples' behavior on your site, you can gather this data and use it to improve your site and your marketing.
The easiest way to gather this data is to use your Web site's server logs, but you'll also want some type of application to convert the data into usable information. Most Web hosts include software for this purpose. If you don't know if your package includes such software, ask your hosting provider.
Packages like Webalizer, ReportMagic, and AWStats do all the hard work for you, and they're generally open-source, that is, free. Any of these packages will give you the basic data you need to begin analyzing traffic trends, including where your traffic is coming from, which pages get the most traffic, and what your daily, weekly, and monthly trends are.
If your hosting company doesn't provide such software, you should be able to install any of these programs yourself. Once installed, the program simply takes the raw log data and converts it into tables and graphs that you can view, print out, or copy and paste into spreadsheets for further analysis.
There are also a number of commercial packages available that have additional, useful features that most open-source options don't include. Some vendors offer either a hosted application or a downloadable application that communicates with a host server. There are also hosted services that are appropriate for small businesses and reasonably priced; depending on their features, they cost between $20 and $100 per month.
Most hosted services require placing a small piece of code, or a traceable image, on each page that reports back to the application. Sometimes the applications use cookies, and sometimes they don't. Such applications do the actual tracking and data storage. There are no significant differences between hosted or downloadable applications, but if, after conducting some research, you realize you have a strong preference for one or the other, you'll need to weigh that preference against the features you're looking for, and the price you're willing to pay for them.
For a comprehensive look at the commercial options available, read the AllBusiness.com Buyer's Guide to Web Site Analysis. We also help you decide what functionality you need in Features to Look For in Web Site Analysis Tools.
Some solutions are geared specifically to tracking advertising, but the good ones track all aspects of the data, including on-site advertising. Look for those that track time values, such as the time someone spends on your site, because this can be particularly important if you depend on advertising revenue. More time on your site means more advertising exposure.
