The Importance Of Site Traffic Analysis
Site traffic analysis — What is it and should you worry about it? Well, no, you shouldn’t worry about it, but you should know what it is and what it can do for you. If you have a website, you’ve no doubt put some thought into drawing traffic. Without site traffic analysis, you have no idea if what you’re doing is having any sort of effect. Sure, you can wait around to see if you seem to be selling more goods or getting more comments on your commercial blog, but that isn’t enough. You might just boost your website traffic without boosting your sales. That would mean that your marketing problem lies in the site itself, or that there is something wrong with your product. These are the sort of issues that site traffic analysis can help you figure out.
Now that you’ve decided that site traffic analysis is a good thing, you have to figure out just what you would like to know about your site’s numbers. For one, you have to decide if you want just a free visitor counter — or if you would like to get something more intensive. Both StatCounter.com and ShinyStat.com offer free invisible web trackers. There is a caveat to the ShinyStat counter, though — it is free only for non-profit use. They do have a 7.33 Euro/month counter, called the ShinyStat Pro, which will give 40 ranking reports per month. The Business version — for 17.50 Euro/month — will give you 90 ranking reports per month, search engine positioning, and other benefits.
Software offering detailed site traffic analysis reports can go a long way to help increase efficiency of your site. OneStat.com can give you a multitude of statistics on visitors, search engines, and online commerce — while monitoring your website for downtime around the clock. If the software detects a problem with your site, it will notify you right away. This could put a huge dent in your downtime and help boost website traffic simply by keeping your site available twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week.
Google Analytics is free to all advertisers, publishers, and site owners who simply must have access to information like ranking reports. Google just released a new version on May 8, 2007 at the Emetrics Summit, a conference held in San Francisco geared toward the optimization of websites. The software is free, but Google offers different consulting services and support packages for a fee. However, webmasters comfortable with using site traffic analysis software are welcome to use Google Analytics. While it’s important that you boost your website traffic, it’s equally important to know when and how you’ve actually done the job.
By Web Traffic Editor