Although it might not be the most exciting part of running an online business, keeping tabs of your website's tracking logs might just be the most important. In the memorable words of Declan Dunn: "There are two types of businesses online; those who test and those who lose money."

Why Bother With Website Tracking?

As we've already established, every Web page you drive traffic to must have a hidden counter or offer some sort of statistical reporting so you can see how many people clicked through to it. Most Web hosts offer you use of a stats program free with your hosting account - or access to your referrer logs. This may be all you need, if you know how to interpret the statistical information.

However, if you really want to know all there is to know about your site visitor's behavior, you're probably best off going with an automated tracking software or web-based solution. You'll get far more comprehensive information delivered to you in a user-friendly format that will help you to better understand exactly what you have to do to improve your sales process. 

Just what can you learn by tracking your visitors footsteps? Your site's stats are the single most effective means for discovering what's really going on at your website. Web stats tell you much more than how many visitors you get to your website. They also help you to do the following:

• Discover who your visitors are
• Learn how long they visit
• Learn where they came from
• Learn whether they really read your pages or just skim over them
• Learn what path your visitors take through your site
• Find out which pages or resources on your site are the most popular
• Find out which days of the week are the busiest and which are the slowest
• Find out which hours in the day are most popular (so you'll know the best time of day to make updates)
• Learn how effective your various advertising campaigns are
• Obtain information on referring sites, search engines and keyword usage
• Learn what links your visitors click to leave your site
• Determine which browsers and platforms are used by people visiting your site

In sum, because tracking statistics tell you who comes to your website, what they do when they're there and how long they stay, they are essential in helping you to both increase the effectiveness of your website itself and to determine the effectiveness of the various advertising campaigns you are using.  Since these two concepts are an integral part of the success or failure of any Internet marketing campaign, you really have no business being in business unless you are prepared to keep track of your site's statistics.

Unfortunately, far too many beginning Internet marketers don't make ongoing site tracking and traffic analysis the top priority it should be. Their rationale goes something like this: More visitors equal more sales right? So why waste valuable time on boring stat analysis when you can be out actively promoting your site? 

This is true, as far as it goes. But if you don't know your stats, how do you know how many visitors you're actually getting - and how many of those visitors are actually buying your product? How do you know if your website is actually doing it's job of selling? If it isn't, then you're wasting a hell of a lot of valuable time and money promoting it.

As a webmaster it's critical that you know the answers to questions like:

• How do visitors find your site in the first place?
• How many of them make it past the main page?
• Which page of your site is the most popular?
• How long does the average visitor stick around?
• How long do they stay on each page?
• What is the average number of pages viewed?
• What path do visitors take through your site?
• What links do they use to leave your site?

If you don't know the answers to these simple questions you're throwing money down the proverbial drain. Furthermore, without these and other statistics it's impossible to determine the value of a visitor - which makes advertising much more difficult than it needs to be. 

By properly tracking your site, and the manner in which visitors use it, you'll be able to "tweak" your website and sales copy for maximum effectiveness. You'll also be able to maximize the effectiveness of your advertising because you'll know where your traffic is coming from. Tracking can also help you determine exactly where there are weaknesses and flaws in your sales materials and process, so you can fix or eliminate them. 

For example, if you find out that your visitors spend an average of 2 minutes on your website - and it takes at least 5 minutes to read your sales letter, then you know that your sales letter needs to be shortened. Or perhaps you need to re-work your copy entirely to keep your readers interested longer.

If your website isn't making any money, it's important to know why. Is it lack of traffic? Or are people getting to the site but not buying from your sales letter? Perhaps there are stumbling blocks preventing them from ordering, like a slow loading page or a defective order form? Maybe it's the headline? Or is it something else entirely?

Tracking your visitors' footsteps will help you to determine why they did not take the action that you wanted them to take - whatever that may be. People are quite predictable in their actions after you know what those actions are. Once you know the way in which the average visitor navigates your site, and how they typically respond to various stimuli, you can fix what needs fixing to get the results you desire.

Making Sense out of Log Statistics

First and foremost, it is important to make a distinction between hits and visits. When visitors browse a web page, every file that is accessed to display the page in their browser is considered a hit. Accessing a web page with several graphics or links will generate several hits; one hit for the page itself and others for each image or link displayed on the page. 

(Beware of webmasters using hit counters to advertise the popularity of their sites. If they're counting file access or hits rather than actual visits, this would give the erroneous impression that their site is far more popular than it really is.)

Hits are recorded in a special file on the server called an access log. When a browser requests a resource at a Website, the server retrieves the file and then writes an entry in the access log for the request. Entries in the server access log (blessedly written in ordinary text) indicate many things about the file transfer, including the success or failure of the transfer. 

(Many servers use error logs as well, which are helpful in providing more detail about specific errors that occur at your site, such as broken links or defective reference.)

An access log is the key to discovering who is visiting your website and why. website traffic analyzers use these log entries to create their reports. The most basic format for server access logs is the common log file format, which includes entries in the following fields.

• Host: Identifies the host computer requesting a file from your Web server. This information is presented in the form of a fully qualified domain name or an IP address, a numeric equivalent of a domain name.
• Identification: This field is meant to identify users by their usernames, but it is rarely used. You'll generally see a hyphen (-) in this field.
• User Authentication: This field only comes into play when your have password protected areas at your website. If you do and users authenticate themselves with a username and password, the username is entered into this field. If you don't, you'll see a hyphen (-) in this field.
• Time Stamp: Tells you exactly when someone accessed a file on your server.
• HTTP Request Type: This field is used to determine the method (and HTTP version) a visitor used to retrieve information, as well as the file requested.
• Status Code: A three-digit number that tells you of the status of files transferred. A status code beginning with 2 tells you that a file was transferred successfully. A code beginning with 3 indicates that the server performed a redirect. A code beginning with 4 is indicative of some type of user error or failure, and one beginning with 5 tells your that an error occurred on your server.

Some servers also contain a referrer log and an agent log. The referrer log is used to record the URL form which a visitor accesses your site, and the agent log records the type of browser used to request a resource at your site. In an effort to conserve Web server resources, many service providers do not offer the use of these two logs, although some offer a combined log, in which the referrer and agent entries are logged into a single file to reduce the drain on system resources.

Automate Your Stat Analysis

If all this sounds rather confusing it's probably because it is, and making sense of you log stats can also be quite time consuming - especially if you are going to be tracking and analyzing the stats for more than one website. Fortunately, there are several top-notch services will do all the complicated work for you. These services are also helpful if your web host's scripts are not as thorough as you would like.

The most comprehensive solution is a service called StatCruncher. This powerful software does all the analyzing and computing for you and compiles all the critical data into easy-to-read reports, which are instantly accessible anytime you need them. You can check on the performance or profitability of individual links or have it evaluate your entire account. 

Another excellent tracking and stat crunching service is Implix's HyperTracker, which can be easily implemented into any ad campaign. You simply login to your private "tracking area" and, with the click of your mouse, you can view the results of all your marketing campaigns, as well as your ROI (Return on Investment), customer to sales ratio, and a host of other valuable stats guaranteed to grow your online profits by over 450% month after month.

If you're looking for a web-based solution, Clickalyzer gives you the most bang for your buck. It tracks your entire sales process - advertising, website, visitors- from top to bottom, abd then provides you with exactly the information you need to make the necessary changes to maximize your results and profits! 

Several other excellent web-based solutions include Sam Robbins' popular AdMinder, and an even simpler solution for the technologically challenged, 123 Count. You simply cut and paste a few lines of HTML code into your website and you're ready to start recording information about your visitors in real time. 

Marlon Sanders has recently come up with a nifty, multi-featured Daily Stats Software program that lets you keep crucial stats on your business daily. If you don't know your dollars per unique visitor for yesterday, last week and last month, if you don't know your conversion percentages, refunds and so forth, you need this software!