Web site traffic analysis is an old science. Hit counters are almost entirely (deservedly) dead. If you're going to make statements or draw conclusions from site traffic data--to sell advertising, for example--you're going to need a reliable way to determine the following: How many visitors are you getting? How long are they staying? How many pages are they seeing? Which pages lead to actual purchase decisions? What advertisements or link bring qualified visitors to a site or page? Does this
Web site attract repeat visitors?
Why hits are a meaningless number
Hits are the old way to measure site popularity. Every time your page is loaded, your server counts it as a hit. The problem with this measure is that it's estimated that as much as 1/3 of all site traffic is by spiders, which are programs that crawl the Web, either as part of a search engine or looking for e-mail addresses. This means that as much as 1/3 of all requests for your home page are never seen by human eyes.
A more meaningful statistic to you is the number of unique visitors. By collecting the IP address of visitors, or by placing cookies on the browsers of visitors, you can determine how many actual visitors (that's unique sets of eyeballs) have seen your site. This information is much more useful to you and to potential advertisers.
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Mining the Data
Fortunately, most Web servers collect much of this data into log files. By default, a log file for a site is stored in the root directory, and is compiled automatically as visitors pass through a site. They are also a treasure trove of valuable information. Where would you find your log file? If your Web site is www.overtheweb.com, the log file would be in the directory that held your default.html (or index.html or home.html, depending on what you called it) file.
If you're working with a reputable Web Presence Provider, there may be some reports available to you. WebTrends (www.webtrends.com) is probably the most popular software available for use by WPPs. It creates impressive and useful reports. If your WPP isn't providing you any, or if you run your own servers, you can use WebTrends or other similar products (see resources below) to analyze your log files.
Little Guys: Even if you don't have your own domain name, and you don't know where your service provider (or even whether your service provider) stores log data and what kind of access you can have, you can still get basic site statistics by using an invisible counter on your page via a free service. TheCounter (www.thecounter.com) offers just such a service. Just insert the code for the invisible counter into your home page and check your stats on TheCounter's site. TheCounter reports when the visits occur, the referring URL, and what browser your visitors are using. Very cool and the price is right!
Hacker alert: There may be types of data that you can't find in a log file or that your Web server isn't collecting. If that's the case for you, see if your Web server can log more data than you're currently collecting, or if there are COM objects or plug-ins available for your server that would allow you to collect more data. Close analysis of your Web traffic can help you determine whether a competitor is spidering your site either to check your prices or to steal your content.
Resources:
Looking for a traffic analysis package? The following are good values and handle the analysis needs of many sites more than adequately.
WebTrends (www.webtrends.com). Detailed analysis of log files. Great reports. Intuitive interface. Includes support for up to 100 virtualdomains. Perfect for WPPs or ISPs. WebTrends Professional Suite 3.0 $599.
NetIntellect (www.webmanage.com). Detailed analysis of log files including reverse DNS lookup and user profiling. Can help you track ad campaigns. Great reports. NetIntellect 4.0 $199.
Net.Analysis (www.netanalysis.com). Collects its own data for extensive analysis. Net.Analysis 4 begins at $11,500 for NT, $15,000 for Unix.
-Alexis D. Gutzman
E-commerce Technology Author and Consultant
Author, The HTML 4 Bible, ColdFusion for Dummies
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