Web Analytics

I often come across people saying “I don’t like my website” or “my website suck”. Perhaps they are referring to the look and feel of their website in comparison to other sites. Eventually, they go and change the look, in the process, alter the structure of the site altogether. Very soon the new website also starts to “suck”, if you know what I mean. Perhaps people get bored with their website too quickly, or it could be that they never think of their website in terms of return on investment (ROI) – I will write about ROI another time. When we alter the structure of a website, in a sense, we trash a lifetime of information that could have helped in improving the website.

If you are ever thinking of improving your website, first perform a web analytics to find out what your customers or visitors are doing on the site. The information will serve as a base for future development. If you have never used Web Analytics on your website, then you must start using without further delay...please read on.

In plain language Web Analytics is the collection, analysing and interpretation of data relates to website activities. There are two types of Web analytics. In this posting, I will write about the one using the web log file.

The Web log file is a simple text file located on the web server. The file is written in ASCII, hence, can be viewed using a text editor. Every time someone requests a web page, the server enters a line in the log file…something like…

142.134.25.73 - - [24/Aug/2004:11:20:39 -0600] "GET /download.html HTTP/1.1" 200 231

While it is possible to make sense of what the above entry implies it is not something that any of us want to be decoding. Webaliser, a free program, can be used to analyse web log files to produce traffic report to and through the website. Usually, most Webmasters use it to generate traffic report. Rather than me writing here about what’s possible and what’s not with a web log file, read for yourself a short article explaining that at http://www.webalizer.org/simpleton.html .

In my next posting I will tell you about Tag based Web Analytics…catch you soon.