Webstats: Get To Know Your Audience

Posted by EssexMax on 9 July 2010 under Web Stats | Be the First to Comment

Using Webstats

Webstats are key to understanding who’s visiting your site, what your visitors are looking for, what’s popular, and how your site is being accessed.

Your web hosting provider may provide webstats, but in many cases, this only gives you half the story. If you buy a hosting package, you may find you have a free stats service such as AWStats, pictured below. (Example of what AWStats offers)

To get the best understanding of your audience, you may want to sign up for an online stats service.

To use an online web stats service, you will typically need to paste a few lines of code onto each of your pages, then log on and view details of your site visitors via the web stats site. Here are details of three recommended solutions:

• Google Analytics – Free, and from the people that run the largest search engine (example of Google Analytics)
• Clicky – Free, and probably the most comprehensive of the stats services out there (See our Clicky Review)
• StatCounter.com – Free, and user friendly, but capped to 500 recorder per site

If you want the best picture of what your online audience is up to on your site, we’re happy to recommend Clicky.com – the basic service is free, but for multiple sites, you will need a pay a small annual fee ($30 US at the time of writing)