Nowadays, many web hosting companies offer free tools for analyzing web traffic statistics. Some of these tools are AWStats and Webalizer. The data produced can be very useful to help you locate the effective and ineffective areas of your website.
One of the most important data reported by the stats programs is the number of unique visitors to your website. With AWStats and Webalizer, the data is presented on a daily, weekly and monthly basis. By viewing it you will be able to measure your website’s activities.
However, the data about unique visitors alone is not enough to determine how well your website is doing. You must also identify the behavior of your visitors to measure more accurately the effectiveness of your site. As one of the most popular web traffic analysis tools, AWStats allows you to find out the average visit duration of your site visitors.
If there are too many brief visits, say less than 30s, it is most likely that there is an underlying problem. Then the challenge is to figure out what that problem is. It could be that your keywords target the wrong markets or perhaps it is because your graphics are confusing or intimidating, causing visitors to exit rapidly.
Another important data is about the most viewed web pages. By analyzing the data you will be able to pin-point areas on your website that need to be improved. Then you can focus your marketing efforts on these pages. For instance, you can focus on the improvement of the design of the pages.
The site statistical tools also reveal entry and exit trends on a particular web page. If you see there is a significant percentage of visitors exited through particular pages you must closely examine that pages to discern what the problem is.
Web log analysis tools, such as AWStats and Webalizer, are also able to record top keyphrases which have been responsible for driving traffic to your site. This can help you determine the right keywords for your new web pages. Additionally, the data are also useful for finding out what your visitors actually want.
Analyzing the data about the websites which have succeeded in leading visitors to your site (Site Referrers) can also be accomplished with the help of web log analysis software. By viewing the presented data, for instance, you can trace which article directories are worth your time submitting your next articles.
There are still other sets of data generated by stats programs such as AWStats or Webalizer. AWStats, for instance, also provides reports about the Operating Systems and Browsers that are mostly used by your site visitors, including where they come from. The data about countries is useful to determine whether you need to translate your website or not.
If you use a multiple domain hosting, the web traffic analysis tools, such as AWStats or Webalizer, will provide the statistics of each of your websites. With these tools you can find out how well each of your websites has performed. Some reliable hosting providers today also offer free tools that can help you measure your website’s activities. For instance, the ones that I use also provide information about the last 300 visitors who came to my site in details.
Once again, web log analysis software, such as Webalizer or AWStats, is useful to help you figure out how well or how poorly your site is working for your visitors. After you have analyzed your visitor statistics, just apply the results to your online business.
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