Free Website statistics

Analyzing webSite Statistics

First and most important is to know your site targets. Statistics should be analyzed according to your website target.
Statistical programs include a lot of data displayed in various forms such as graphs, tables and lists. When analyzing statistics, it is important to know what you are looking for and to separate from the data the really important information. Don't jump to conclusions when the number of visitors is small (tens of visitors) but rather wait until you have enough visitors. It is customary to analyze data from a weekly, monthly or quarterly perspective.

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Search Engines optimization - SEO

Optimization for search engines means, changing the site content to attract users of various search engines. To optimize for search engines you need the following information:
•    From which search engines were visitors referred (referrers).
•    From which search engines weren't visitors referred (referrers) – check why.
•    What were the main keywords used by surfers to reach your website (search terms or keywords).
•    What did visitors do on your site according to the set of keywords they used (a combination of navigation path and search terms) – maybe many visitors arrived by mistake and left immediately because the site wasn't what they were looking for.
•    When performing an analysis of search terms you also need to find what important keywords are missing from the statistics and to try to understand why (a bad ranking in the search engines, for example).

Design and Web Content optimization

What are the pages your visitors especially like? What are the pages your visitors hate? Once you learn the answers to these questions, you can change and improve your weak pages. The information necessary for analyzing web pages is:
•    Entry pages – what are the pages used to enter your site? Do visitors continue to surf the site from these pages? For example, a link to a good article might bring a lot of users but they leave immediately after reading it. You can add text to the article which will make visitors want to continue to search your site for more information.
•    Exit pages – from which pages do visitors, leave your site? Check carefully to see if there is something on these pages that causes visitors to leave. Try to fix the problem and then see if there is an improvement.
•    Online time – how long do visitors stay on your site and at each page?
•    Navigation path – where do visitors go after each page? Look for a pattern. Try to direct visitors to places you want them to visit.
•    Page view – how many times do visitors view each page? Does a particular page attract more visitors? Strengthen links to these pages.

Optimizing the Purchasing Process, Registration or Contact

This optimization is extremely important since this is how a site achieves its goals. These processes are the Achilles heel of many stores and sites. You need to monitor what is happening with these processes, to improve them and then check them again. It is important to change one thing each time to see if an improvement has been made. Statistical tools necessary are:
•    The entries to each page during the purchasing process and to which page did the visitor continue after that (navigation path and page view).
If you find that many visitors leave the process from a specific page, try to improve this page. There might be fields that scare away customers or something in the design that isn't clear.
•    How do the customers arrive at the purchasing process (navigation path)? Check to see which pages are most effective at convincing customers to make the purchase or to contact you. Copy these strategies onto other pages.

Improving and Increasing Good Visitors to Your Site

Remember, we aren't looking for a lot of entries! We are looking for a lot of users who help reach the site's target. Be sure to analyze the site statistics from the point of view of the site's target. A good visitor is someone interested in what you have to offer. We aren't looking for users who enter the site and then immediately leave. To increase the number of good visitors, employ the following means:
1.    Optimizing for search engines – see the explanation above
2.    Advertising campaigns in different sites and indexes
3.    Advertising campaigns through email
4.    Promoting the site in forums
5.    Attaining links from relevant sites
You should check to see which means are best for increasing the number of good users. To find this out, you need the following statistical information:
•    From where did the good visitors come (a combination of referrers, online time and navigation path)? A good visitor can be defined as someone who visited the site for more than 60 seconds. An excellent visitor is one who helps achieve the site goal. Check to see from which sites good visitors come.
•    Returning users – check to see which visitors return again and again. How did they reach you the first time? Is there a way to find more visitors like these?
•    Track the results of advertising campaigns and site promotions – check to see if an advertising campaign from a specific site returned the investment. Complex statistical programs allow you to analyze in depth an advertising campaign to identify which users arrived at the site as a result of the campaign and whether the site goal was achieved in terms of return on investment. Certain programs also let you track an email campaign by identifying the link from the email.

Monitoring Advertiser Links and Banners

Advanced statistical programs can help you monitor and analyze the cost profitability of banners and links of advertisers on your site. You can find data on the viewing of banners and clicks on links and banners. For this you need the following data:
The number of views on a specific page (page view) – this data is relevant only if you have one permanent banner on a page. If you have a changing banner, it is the job of the banner rotation system to measure the number of views.
Number of clicks on a link (click through) – will allow you to monitor how many people clicked on each link.

Free Website statistics software's and some paid ones

Most website hosting packages include a statistics system. Statistics systems are an integral part of control panels provided with the hosting package. Standard statistics systems are:
Analog – a basic statistics system. I don't recommend using it.
Webalizer – data along with graphs but missing a lot of information.
Awstats – out of the three standard statistics programs, this one is preferable. Nevertheless, too much information is missing to perform a serious analysis.

Another family of statistics programs are those installed on your personal computer that use the internet server's log. This log contains much information about surfers' actions on the site. You need to verify the availability of the server log with your internet provider. I don't know of any free programs for analyzing the log offering more than the standard statistical systems. An interesting program you have to pay for is ClickTracks. This program offers an interesting model that simulates the surfing process on the site. The disadvantage of this program is the high price of it.

The third family of statistics is web based programs. You are required to open an account and to place an HTML section of code in every one of your web pages. When a user visits your site, data about the user is transferred to the system provider and stored there. When you enter your account, you can perform various analyses. A site providing nice statistics for free is statCounter. Sites with services you must pay for that provide more advanced statistics including managing advertising campaigns, visit duration on pages and navigation paths are: HitsLink, SiteStats and OpenTracker. Opentracker is the most impressive site I have seen with a reasonable price.

Another option is to install a statistics module on your site. For this, it is recommended to use the services of an internet developer. The free website statistics software that I like best is PPhlogger. This program provides an excellent solution for small websites. The biggest advantage of this program is it allows you to see user information immediately without having to wait for general reports. You can correlate how the customer arrived at your site, key words, online time, navigation path, entry page and exit page all at one place.

You can receive a free account of the installed system on my website.
For more details see free website Statistics for Your Site

Conclusion

I hope I have aroused your awareness to the necessity of analyzing your website. It is important to remember to do a statistical analysis according to the goals you have set for the site. Make sure the analysis is done over a long enough time frame and search for general conclusions.
Good Luck!

Article author
Yaron Shaool

Relevant links:

OpenTracker
PPhlogger
free website Statistics for Your Site