Find
Out How Well Your Website Is Doing With Free Web Log Analysis
Tools
Author: ©Heris Yunora
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.
