Web Statistics / Tracking

[silverpuresilver]

We have recently launched a new site, with a new designer.

Our old site (Actinic based) allowed us to track how number of visitors, hits, page views, etc. It also gave us an idea of keywords and search engines that were used to find us.

Our new site does not have any statistics or tracking package.

Does anyone have any advice on this subject - should I purchase a package? How reliable and accurate are they?

Thanks

Karen

[Rob Holmes]

you could download and install something like www.webalizer.com or www.awstats.org both are free :)

Rob

[openmind]

So is the single domain version of SmarterStats, http://www.smartertools.com

[TWD-Tony]

It's very unusual for a hosting plan NOT to have any stats software - what control panel does the hosting use (the bit where you add email addresses etc)

Webaliser & Awstats are very good apps for tracking visitors, but I think you require root access to install them? (I maybe wrong as I have never tried to install either at a site root)

[openmind]

I agree. AWStats can be installed in a site root as long as you have access to run cgi scripts. That and a lot of patience as it's not particularly user friendly.

We supply SmarterStats for our hosting clients and I've yet to find a better package...

[Stephen]

If you don't have any logs, you could try www.statcounter.com - I've hear good reports about it. It can be made invisible, and is free if you only want to review the last 100 entries (but does consolidate historical stats). Be aware it doesn't give you as much as true webserver logs though, 404 errors for example.

Hope this helps!

[Rob Holmes]

Or you could try this..

http://www.webupdate365.com/web_stats_365_what_is_it.php

I agree your host should supply the stats!

Rob

[MichaelG]

Hi we use this http://www.loganalyzer.net/ - One time payment of $99 - you get a lot for your money ;)

[china-peter]

it is really a fine place.

[Ravenfire]

I use Aw Stats within my Control Panel and I also have Stat Counter (free version)

HTH

Toni

[Magsite]

Stat counter is very useful like said above. You are also able with statcounter to show on the page the amount of hits the site has had if you want visitors to see

[silverpuresilver]

Thanks for all your messages.

Unfortunately, I am not technically minded, so I have no idea what site root or access means.

I also would have no idea how to put code into my pages - should my designer be able to tell me this?

With regard to the comment about my hosting company being able to do this for me, they are not the ones who designed our new site (our new designers have made a corporate decision not to host any new sites or e:mails for new sites - at just the point my site was about to go live . . . . . ) not best impressed. :x

Our new site is now hosted by our old hosts (who were also our old site designers) - 'better the devil you know' springs to mind . . .

Karen

[webit]

Stat counter is very useful like said above. You are also able with statcounter to show on the page the amount of hits the site has had if you want visitors to see

We use statcounter and AW Stats. Statcounter is very good and we have the upgraded service.

[hairsoup]

For an e-commerce site I dont think 3rd party stats packages are very important at all. Knowing how many hits or UVs youve had doesnt really tell you anything. The only reason I even check them is to see whos linking to me.

My hosting had matrix stats bundled with it, which cant tell the difference between a hit from natural google results, froogle, or adwords!


My advice - get your techies to code some ways of tracking your targeted traffic [comparison sites, ppc and such], that way you know how many hits youve got, how many turned into a sale, and thus conversion rate and aquisition costs.

This shouldnt take them long, it took me no more than 3 hours to implement, and im not a very efficient coder. When someone buys off my site, i know what site they came from, the search terms they used [if from a search engine].

Stats are one of the most important decision making influences for my marketing strategies - just make sure the stats you look at are relevant to what your trying to measure.

[Sapphire-Limited]

Hello

WE use website a website tracking tool that I can recommend.

Here's the link:
http://extremetracking.com

there's a free version and you may find its all you need.

Good Luck
Gareth
Sapphire Document Solutions

[multilingual]

My web host provides all the tracking stats, but I also recently added a trial version of another tracker to my site.

I wanted to put the stats side by side to see how they compared.

Just to give an example, my host showed 241 unique visitors came to one of my sites yesteday. The free tracker showed only 2.

No idea what to make of that.

:?

JB