Knowing how many people are visiting your website, where they come from, and what they do when they visit your pages is key to the success of any business or service on the web.
Here are three traffic reporting services you can easily add to the pages of any web site to get detailed traffic reports.
Get all the details with Google Analytics
Google Analytics is by far one of the most popular and comprehensive traffic counters on the web — and it’s free! You just add a little snippet of code to your Web pages, and Google tracsk your visitors, creating a comprehensive report full of juicy details.
You’ll not only get the numbers of visitors and where they came from, you can even see what people search for on Google before they visit your site.
To sign up, just visit http://www.google.com/analytics/ and follow the instructions to create an acccount for your site and generate the code you’ll need to add to your pages. Then it’s as easy as copy and paste to get your site set up. If you use a template to create your pages, you can simply paste the Google Analytics code snipped into the bottom of your template and it will automatically be added to all of your pages.
Instructions: How to inset code from Google AdSense, Flickr, YouTube, and other sites in Adobe Dreamweaver
Keeping Track with Stat Counter
Most Web hosting services provide basic log reports and traffic information, but if you want to really know how people are finding your Web site and what they’re doing once they get there, consider using a service such as StatCounter.com.
You can start with a free, limited level of service at StatCounter, and upgrade for a fee to view more data. To use the service, you set up an account and fill out a few forms to create a custom set up for your site. Then just copy a bit of code from the StatCounter site into the code in your Web pages. StatCounter then uses that invisible bit of code to track your traffic and generate reports you can view to learn more about your visitors.
Visit StatCounter.com for a demo and sample report with all the different kinds of information you can collect, including what keywords people use to find your site through search engines, what browsers they use to visit your pages, and how long they stay once they get there. Studying how people use your Web site is one of the best ways to determine how you should continue to develop your content and your design and where you’re likely to achieve the greatest success with your Web site.
Watching traffic with Webstat
If you’re looking for the best services for your site, you’ll find another online traffic reporting system Webstat. Similar to StatCounter, you set up an account with Webstat and then insert a snippet of code from their system into your pages.
With Webstat you can include a web counter that displays on your pages for visitors to see, or you can keep your traffic numbers private by using their invisible service. Sign up for a limited free account, or consider one of their paid levels of service for more detailed reports.