How to track all your website traffic easily and for free
Know:
* Exactly how many people visit your website?
* How long do they stay on your site before continuing?
* Exactly where do those visitors come from each day?
* How much of your website traffic is repeat visitors?
* The exact paths people take when they click on your website?
This is what I mean:
If you don't know your visitors, it will be *very* difficult for you to improve your website's performance and convert more visitors to customers - AND - get more quality traffic. For the simple reason that you are effectively working blindly.
Without knowing how people visit your site and what they do on your site, any attempt to increase your traffic and improve the profitability of your website works with one arm tied behind your back, at least.
And unfortunately, the web statistics that come with your web hosting are usually not enough these days.
Depending on your web server, you may have Webalizer, Analog Stats, or AWStats installed on your server. This is how that software works:
It takes the "raw" (unreadable to the human eye) information that your web server stores from all visitors and presents it in an easy-to-understand way.
Unfortunately, due to a number of technical reasons, this information is often presented quite inaccurately.
And in my personal experience, these software packages don't present this information in a particularly useful way for someone trying to improve their website's conversion rates and profitability.
What I personally do, and what I suggest you do, is use a "Tracking Solution" that accurately tracks and reports all of your visitors in an easy to read and understand way. These solutions come in two forms: Software and Services.
Both options have their pros and cons, but what they both do very well is present exactly what's happening on your website up to the minute, and in a way that's very helpful in making good (and profitable) decisions for your business. .
To get you started, here is a software solution that you can install and use for free on your website:
Now before you go and install it, of course you should be familiar with installing software on your server. If you're not comfortable installing software on your website, a follow-up service (which I'll talk about in a moment) is probably best for you.
And it's also important to note that installing software on your website can often put more pressure on the server. This is particularly true if you are on shared hosting.
I have personally used the following free tracking software and it works fine. See what you think. Go to http://www.curve2.com and search for "TrackPro". As I write this, version 2 is in Beta and can be downloaded from the site at the following address: http://www.curve2.com/trackpro.php
You'll also find many more free tracking software solutions at http://www.hotscripts.com.
But speaking personally, what I have found works very well and avoids adding to the pressure on my existing websites is to use a third party tracking service.
The only things you really need to worry about when using a third-party service are:
* How long will this service be available? (If they suspend your service after one year, you won't be able to access your old data, and you'll also have to change all your tracking codes on your pages.)
* What is your privacy policy regarding my web statistics? (Are they honest and trustworthy in other words? You don't want service owners studying and then duplicating your successful business plan.)
For the last month I have been using ecommStats (http://www.ecommstats.com). Now, this service isn't free, but right now they give you 50,000 free pageviews per domain, and depending on how busy your site is, those pageviews can go on for a long time.
The service works great and is very easy to add to your pages - just add three lines of code to 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 are tracked accurately and in great detail.
Alternatively, a completely free (at this time) and very established service is StatCounter (http://statcounter.com). It even has a glowing review from Tucows.com (one of the biggest download sites on the internet) which speaks for itself and adds a lot of credibility to the service.
And in case you're wondering how a free service like StatCounter makes money, well, since it's such a popular service with many webmasters who log in every day (and I'm sure many evenmore than once a day like me) which has made it much easier for them to sell a lot of advertising on their site. They also offer an upgrade to their advanced payment service.
But thinking beyond the free services, as your business grows you may choose to upgrade to higher-end paid services that provide even more in the department.