Are Your Web Site Traffic Stats Driving You Crazy?

When I first built my web site - I did not want to pay my hosting company a monthly web statistics (aka web analytics) processing fee. I opted instead for their free version. Unfortunately, their stats did not resolve the IP addresses to some thing I could readily understand and I had to wait 24 to 48 hours for my hosting company to process my visitor stats for me.

I wanted to know, in real time, how my visitors were finding my web site and whether or not they clicked on a link I had posted on some classified ad web sites. Knowing where my visitors came from (aka Referral URL) gave me a very sharp insight in to my link posting and advertising campaign. It's important to also know what web page they visited and if they were a returning visitor. A returning visitor is one who previously visited your site and subsequently returned again. It's also important to know how they navigated through your site.

Of course, if you are selling products or services that are selling like hot cakes then you probably don't care much about your web stats. But, if you are some what like me, who is struggling to drive traffic to my web site, then you will want to glean and study your web stats as they occur.

Over time I gave up using my web hosting free stats and signed up for their paid for stats processing. I eagerly waited for my hosting company to process my stats for the previous 24 hour period. I must admit that my paid for stats were easy to read, but a little difficult to analyze. I did noticed that most of my visits came from me tweaking and testing my web site.

I would have liked to have had the ability to not score my own visits. Over time I noticed that Google Search was showing up on my stats which shock the heck out of me as I never submitted my web site for them to index (build it and they will come).

Again, over time I decided to dump my hosting stats and do some Bing web searches for a free stat counter company that can deliver real time stats with out that goofy looking page counter you may have seen on some web site page.

There are a lot of companies out there that provide this service, choosing the right one will be a matter of personal preference. You may have asked yourself how they capture your visitor's information. The company I use requires you to place some java script on each page you want to capture data from. Don't be put off by this it's a simple copy and paste procedure.

Before you ask, here is a link to the Stat Counter company I use. Other than being a user of their stat service I am in no way affiliated or remunerated.