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How To Track All Your Website Traffic For Free
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Author: Louis Allport
Topic: Advertising
Viewed: 49 time(s)
[ Not Rated Yet ]
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Do you know:
* Exactly how many people are visiting your website? * How long
they?re staying on your site before they move on? * Exactly
where those visitors are coming from, each day? * How much of
your website traffic is repeat visitors? * The exact paths
people take as they click their way through your website?
Here?s what I?m getting at:
If you don?t know your visitors, it makes it *very* difficult
for you to improve the performance of your website and turn more
visitors into customers - AND - get more quality traffic. For
the simple reason that you?re effectively working blind.
Without knowing how people visit your site and what they do on
your site, any attempts at growing your traffic and improving
the profitability of your website is working with one armed tied
behind your back, at least.
And unfortunately - the web stats that come with your
web-hosting are generally not enough these days.
Depending on your web host, chances are you?ve either got
Webalizer, Analog Stats, or AWStats installed on your server.
Here?s how that software works:
It takes the ?raw? (unreadable to the human eye) information
your web server stores of everyone that visits and presents this
in an easy to understand way.
Unfortunately, due to a number of technical reasons, this
information is often presented in quite an inaccurate way.
And in my personal experience, these software packages don?t
present this information in a particularly helpful way either
for someone trying to improve the conversion ratios and
profitability of their website.
What I personally do, and what I would suggest you do is use a
?Tracking Solution? that accurately tracks and reports all your
visitors in an easy to read and understand way. These solutions
come in two forms: Software & Services
Both these options have their pros and cons, but what they both
do very well is present exactly what?s happening on your website
right up to the minute, and in a way that?s very helpful to you
for making good (and profitable) decisions for your business.
To start with here?s a software solution you can install and use
for free on your website:
Now before you go and install it, you should of course be
familiar with installing software on your server. If you?re not
comfortable installing software on your website, a tracking
service (which I?ll come to in a moment) would probably be best
for you.
And it?s also important to note that installing software on your
website can often put more strain on the server. This is
particularly true if you?re on shared hosting.
I?ve personally used the following free tracking software and it
works well. See what you think. Go to http://www.curve2.com and
look for ?TrackPro?. As I write this, version 2 is in Beta and
is downloadable from the site at the following address:
http://www.curve2.com/trackpro.php
You?ll also find many further free tracking software solutions
at http://www.hotscripts.com
But personally speaking, what I?ve found works very well and
avoids putting any increased strain on my existing websites is
using a third party tracking service.
The only things really to worry about when using a third party
service are:
* How long will this service be around? (If they stop their
service after a year, you wouldn?t be able to access your past
data and will have to change all your tracking codes on your
pages too.) * What is their privacy policy regarding my web
stats? (Are they honest and trustworthy in other words. You
don?t want the service owners studying and then duplicating your
successful business plan.)
Over the past month I?ve been using ecommStats
(http://www.ecommstats.com). Now, this service isn?t free, but
at this time they give you 50,000 free page views per domain,
and depending how busy your site is those page views can last
you a very long time.
The service works great and is very easy to add to your
pages?simply add three lines of code at the bottom of each of
your pages (you can easily do this with Server Side Includes if
you?re comfortable with that) and all your visitors get tracked
accurately and in great detail.
Alternatively - an entirely free (at this time) and very
established service is StatCounter (http://statcounter.com). It
even has a rave review from Tucows.com (one of the largest
download sites on the internet) which speaks for itself and adds
a lot of credibility to the service.
And just in case you?re wondering how a free service like
StatCounter makes money, well - since it?s such a popular
service with many webmasters logging in every day (and many I?m
sure even more than once a day just like me) that it?s made it
very easy for them to sell a lot of advertising on their site.
They also offer an upgrade to their advanced paid service.
But thinking beyond free services, as your business grows you
may choose to upgrade to high end paid services that provide
even more in depth information about your visitors...
Services like Urchin (Urchin.com - owned by Google) or Deep
Metrix (DeepMetix.com). However, to help you grow your business
to that point you need to keep a close eye on what your visitors
are doing and where they?re coming from, and free tracking
software and services is a great way for you to start to do
this.
About the author:
Louis Allport is an online product developer and marketer and
recently revealed a simple and *proven* four-step formula for
creating best-selling products practically on demand:
http://www.marktse.com/recommend/bestseller.php
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