Do you know:
- How many visitors were on your website last week?
- Which pages on your website are most popular?
- Which country/county they came from?
- Which Keywords are bringing most customers to your website?
- What is Google Analytics?
If you answered No to any or all of the questions above then keep reading and by the end of this Knowledgement article you will be ready to track visitors to your website.
There are a number of tools which can help you achieve this. These tools can be categorised broadly in two different categories:
- Web Counters
- Javascript Based Counters
Web Counters
Web counter like the one above are available from sites like www.webcounter.com. These are basic counters which increase by one every time the webpage is reloaded. They offer basic functionality to tell you and the visitors of your website about the popularity of a particular web page. But, they can be manipulated by refreshing the web page again and again. Also, they don’t tell you any other details about the visitor or his behaviour on your website. If you want to track every page you need to put a counter on every page. If you don’t put a counter on every page the visitor who comes to your website from a page other than the home page (Using Google Search or the URL you gave him) will not be tracked.
Javascript Counters
Javascript based counters are the best available in the market at the moment.These counters tell you to place a Javascript code in each of your web pages. This code works equally well on static HTML pages or a Dynamic page generated using a Content Management System. Any visit to your website is reported to your service provider (Provider of the Javascript Counter) and you can go to the website of your counter provider to see your reports. There are a number of companies, who are offering a service similar to each other namely,
- Stat Counter (www.statcounter.com)
- Site Meter (www.sitemeter.com)
- Google Analytics (www.google.com/analytics)
Site Meter puts a picture on your webpage so you have to be careful where to put their code in your webpage but Stat Counter and Google Analytics provide an invisible counter and hence can be put anywhere on your webpage. Google Analytics is the best in our opinion because of it’s advanced features and capability of integration to your Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) and Adwords marketing campaign (If you use them). Some of the main features of Google Analytics are,
- Easy to Implement – Install the code on your website and start receiving information
- Detailed information on your visitors (Time Spent, County Level Location, New and Old Visitors, Traffic Sources, Entry and Exit Pages etc.)
- Google Adwords Integration – Provides you integrated approach to your Google Adwords campaign
- Geo Targeting – Helps you identify most lucrative market
Stat Counter is another great tool which is as easy as Google Analytics to install and provides you a lot of information. Also, it gives you the option of a hidden counter on your web pages and hence the visitors don’t know that they are being tracked. On the other hand Site Meter puts a small image on your web pages as advertisement. Analytics and Stat Counter both allow you to setup email notification so that a periodic email with report about your website is emailed to you.
All of these tools have their commercial versions as well. Free versions can provide enough details to track the visitors of a basic website. Commercial versions provide much comprehensive information and allow you to run custom reports.
