How to Analyze Your Web Site Traffic (Part 3)

How to Analyze Your Web Site Traffic (Part 3 of a 3 Part Series)
Copyright 2002 by Herman Drost

In Part 2 of this series, we discussed some of the ways to
track your web site visitors. Now we will take a look at:

4. Web Traffic Analysis Software
These are programs that analyze your server logs and then create
traffic reports accordingly. The quality of the reports generated
will depend on what software you actually use. Some log analyzers
are free and come preinstalled on many hosting accounts, while
others can cost a good deal of money.

Examples:
Webalizer (http://www.webalizer.com)
WebTrends (http://www.webtrends.com)

Webalizer (free)
The Webalizer is a fast, FREE, web server log file analysis
program which produces usage statistics in HTML format
for viewing with a standard web browser. The results are
presented in both columnar and graphical format, which
facilitates interpretation. Yearly, monthly, daily and hourly
usage statistics are presented, along with the ability to
display usage by site, URL, referrer, user agent (browser),
search string, entry/exit page, username and country.

Here's an example of the Web Usage Statistics:
http://www.webalizer.com/sample/index.html

WebTrends ($495)
The Web Trends Analyzer produces essential reports on
web site visitor patterns, referring sites, visitor paths and
demographics. You can learn, for example, which sites
and keyword searches have referred the largest number of
visitors to your site.

It presents data, detailed and in-depth, in an organized and
concise tabular format with full-color graphs.

This Log Analyzer is priced at $495 and is licensed for a single
web server hosting content with a maximum of 50 domains.

Here's a sample of the web usage statistics:
http://download.netiq.com/Library/SampleReports/
WAS_LA_Complete/complete.HTM

Conclusion:
Web traffic statistics provide very valuable information about
your web site. You can make better marketing decisions
through them telling you:

Which Web pages are most popular and which are least used.
Who is visiting your Web site.
Which Web browsers to optimize your Web pages for.
Which Web search engines are most useful to you,
and which are the least useful.
Where errors or bad links may be occurring in your Web pages.

By analyzing your web traffic, you can determine what marketing
strategies are successful. You can then change them as
necessary, to boost the sales or services from your site.