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Tips on Choosing a Website Statistics Software
Web statistics, also known as visitor tracking, are available in mainly three forms: session tracking, on-page tracking and log analysis.
Session tracking
Session tracking is done by assigning a unique identification number (id) to a customer once they arrive to your website and tracking this id throughout their visit. This method is very efficient to follow customers' click paths while they are on your website but has a bad reputation with search engine optimisers because they are not understood by the search engine software and can cause crawling errors. It is often the reason why sites using session id's rank poorly in the search engines.
On-page tracking
On-page tracking is done by embedding a piece of code in your pages or delivering a 'cookie' to your visitor's computer. As with session tracking this method is very good to follow click paths of your visitors from page to page.
Unfortunately, with people becoming more and more aware of privacy issues related to their computer, this method don't always deliver relevant results as many visitors will unknowingly block the used information by tightening their computer privacy settings. For companies running search engine optimisation or pay per click campaigns we recommend this solution.
Google offers a free service called Google Analytics - link opens in a new window that uses this method and we use it on many of our clients' websites.
Log analysis
Log analysis, is the final method. A log entry is created by your server in a file every time a visitor requests a page from your site. This files, and its thousands of entries are then analysed by a software that creates easy to use graphs and charts. This is the simplest solution to learn more about your visitors' behaviour, and it is the default method used in our web hosting service.
Please do not hesitate to use our contact page to get in touch with us if you have any questions about visitors' tracking software.