Most webmasters hardly ever look at them. The smart ones
do, however. There are many different ways of evaluating
log files. I will only recommend programs I use.
For general stats, I recommend Webalizer.
Webalizer is standard on most hosting packages. The software
analyzes your server logs, and then generates a report with
a lot of useful information.
I usually track only a few items:
Average daily visitors-to watch long term traffic trends
Top five entry pages-which pages does most traffic view
first
Hostname-which spiders and bots are visiting
Referrers-which sites are sending me traffic
Search String-what queries are sending me traffic
Once I have a good overview, I dig deeper with Clicktracks.
I use
Clicktracks Analyzer, which allows me to download my
log files, and determine an almost infinite amount of information
about my website's visitors.
Handy Features of Clicktracks:
Tagging visitors
I can tag visitors that actually converted. Once this is
done, I can see which keywords had the highest conversion
rate. This is really useful when determining what to bid
on Google Adwords. Why pay for low converting keywords?
Turn them into negative keywords, and then forget about
it.
I can see, with an overlay on the actuall web page, what
links visitors clicked on, what percent went into my converting
pages, how many bailed, and when. If you have high bail
out rates, maybe they are looking for something and not
finding it on that page. Or perhaps, your navigation is
hard to figure out. Either way, you have some insight into
the brains of your visitors.
This kind of information is hard to come by, and very useful.
One simple change to your website could increase conversion
by 15-30%. But, what do you change? Clicktracks helps you
figure that out.
There are almost unlimited possibilities when using Clicktracks,
and after using it for a while I am sure you will think
of more.
