Tracking Your Website Visitors: A Comprehensive Guide

The Importance of Tracking Website Traffic

Website traffic tracking provides valuable insights into your visitors' behavior. It tells you who's visiting your site, where they're coming from, how long they stay, and which pages they enter and exit from. This information can help you understand your visitors' buying patterns, measure the effectiveness of your marketing strategies, and identify the most and least popular areas of your site. By using this information, you can redesign your site to highlight popular pages and eliminate those that are rarely visited.

How to Collect Website Traffic Stats

There are several ways to collect stats on your website. These include:

• Purchasing software
• Using a free online service
• Using a paid online service or third-party auditors
• Using your own web host

Let's explore each of these options in detail.

Purchasing Software

Purchasing stats software is a reliable way to collect website traffic data. However, the cost can be a deterrent for some. Here are some popular options:

• Webtrends: A leader in stats software, Webtrends offers solutions for businesses of all sizes. However, their services can be quite expensive.
• Website Reporter: This professional website stats software offers many options and costs between $50 to $75. It tracks total hits, report traffic, top entry and exit pages, and more.
• Fast Stats: Priced at $99, Fast Stats is affordable and provides quick insights into who's visiting your site.
• Openwebscope: This software is free to download and $69 to register. It provides easy-to-read charts and graphs that show visitor behavior on your site.

Using a Free Online Service

Many sites offer free stats in exchange for placing a small banner or button on your pages. Here are a few options:

• Free Stats: Free Stats is easy to use, but it inserts a banner on the pages you wish to track. They offer a "gold" service that eliminates the banners for $5.95 a month.
• The Counter: The Counter provides in-depth traffic reports and is simple to use.
• Stat Track: Stat Track provides detailed information about your web guests, but requires a small button on your tracked pages.

Using a Paid Online Service or Third-Party Auditors

Third-party services collect and tabulate your website traffic data. Here are a few options:

• Professional SuperStats: This service offers advanced real-time tracking and historical reporting on site traffic for $19.95 per month or $200 per year.
• Bondsmith: Bondsmith provides traffic measurements and third-party auditing services, excellent for proving traffic patterns to potential advertisers.
• Site Gauge: Site Gauge offers a free service with banners, or a Pro service for $19.95 a month for up to 20,000 page views.

Using Your Own Web Host

Some web hosts can supply you with stats, but not all of them. Check with your host to see if they offer this service and if there's any charge involved.

By analyzing your website statistics, you can make more informed decisions and understand what's working and who's visiting your site. The breadcrumbs are there, it's up to you to find them.