Analyze This: Web Analytics

So, you think you’re off to a good start because you finally got your new Web site up and running. You even have one of those counters at the bottom of your homepage so you know exactly how many people visit your site. Done patting yourself on the back yet? When you are, it’s time to move your site to the next level. It’s time for Web Analytics.

Web Analytics may sound like some sort of complex configuration for your web site, but for amateur Web page developer and internet retailers, Web Analytics is actually an incredibly useful, and easy, tool. In one fell swoop, Web analytics can help you figure out all the important information about people who visit your site. Put simply, it’s a way to study who visits your site, what they do while they are there, and why they leave. We’re talking about, all the Whos, Whats, Wheres, Whens, and Whys.

If you’re looking to sell something on your site, Web analytics can tell you what product pages are attracting the most viewers, which ones the least. The tool can even tell you what parts of your site are confusing to your visitors. And it can tell you where your biggest customers are coming from.

If you’re looking to market yourself on search engines, there’s no better way than Web Analytics. The tool allows you to figure out which keywords work best to drive traffic to your site. It can help you figure out how many hits you’re receiving from your advertising campaigns. That way, you can build your Web content to focus on those keywords and campaigns, and to drive even more traffic to your site.

The benefits of Web analytics are many, so here is just a short list of the main ones.

Web Analytics can:

• provide a traffic count. But unlike those basic counters on the bottom of a homepage, Web Analytics can breakdown your visitors by how many are new, or “unique,” visitors, and how many are repeat visitors, along with what pages, and how many pages, they viewed.

• track down the IP address of your visitors, which is like their numerical address on the Web where the visitors are coming from. Not only that, you can track them down to their geographical, real-world location, too, as well as the time of day that they came.

• breakdown individual visits by the entry page, where the person first landed at your site, and the exit page, the last page they visited before they left. Entry pages generally show that the visitor may have bookmarked your site on that page, probably because of its valuable content. Exit pages, on the other hand, could be your site’s most boring content.

• count the total time that visitors spent on your site, and exactly what path they took through the site. This can give you the better idea about how well-designed your Web page is, so you can learn how to better design your site’s navigation to direct visitors where you want them to go, and get them to stick around your site longer.

• trace your visitors back to the links that brought them to your site. The more links other Web sites have to your pages, the better. On the other hand, visitors may have come straight to your site, which is also not too shabby. It could mean that word-of-mouth on your site is working.

• weigh the value of search engine keywords in your Web content. You could find out what search terms visitors are using at your site. And you could also analyze which terms people are using at search engines to find your site. Either way, it’s a great way to optimize your content to what your visitors are looking for.

The ultimate benefit of Web Analytics is to make your site more worthwhile to its visitors. But of course, you want to make it more worthwhile to you too.

Don Lee is an Internet and eCommerce enthusiast. To get FREE web analytics and statistics for your website, please visit http://www.eWebcounter.com - Free Web Counter

5 good reasons why you may need to change your web host now, before it is too late

There is a very high possibility that changing your web host now
could actually save you a lot of grief in the near future. In
the past people have hardly paid attention to their web hosts
and have thus been ignorant to the fact that this is a choice
that makes a huge impact on performance and ultimately the
success of any online venture.

1)Security at your web host matters The security settings of
your web host matter. They actually matter a lot. So much so
that the security of your site from hacks and all the other
increasing online dangers depends on it. An intensive review of
your web host may lead you to look at a few other web hosts and
their infrastructure with the intention of moving your hosting
elsewhere.

2)Ddos attacks on another site in your hosts network will affect
you The danger of Ddos attacks is on the rise. Ddos or
Distributed Denial-of-service attacks have been targeted at
various well known sites in the past costing losses.

These are the attacks where massive false online traffic is
generated towards your site, thus crippling it. The attack is
executed when thousands of compromised zombie hosts are directed
against a target. These zombie hosts are unwittingly recruited
from the millions of unprotected computers online and are
quickly build up waiting for the command to launch a Ddos
attack. The symptoms are that a site receives impossibly high
false traffic that literally shuts it down.

The protection from this menace does not come cheap. The most
recent Cisco Ddos protection appliance costs about $200,000.
What this means is that many web hosts will not have this
protection. And what makes it worse is that the attack does not
need to be targeted against you for you to be affected. An
attack on any single site a particular hosts’ network will
affect everybody.

3)Can you afford long downtime on your site You may find that
your site goes down far too frequently. This could be as a
result of your host gaining many more clients than their
resources can support. Your site could also be taking too long
to open. There are a host of other technical problems associated
with your web host that could cause these.

A situation like this would mean that valuable traffic is lost
forever and would be cause enough for you to change hosts to a
more efficient and reliable organization.

4)If you are using a free site, you’re not in serious business
If you are currently using a free site, then it is imperative
that you change to a paid site as soon as possible. A free site
is more expensive than most can afford. A poor image and lack of
credibility will mean that few people will dare buy from you.
Some search engines also do not index free-hosted sites, which
would impact on your traffic since search engines are the chief
method of receiving traffic.

5)You will need a blog which is a challenge to most web hosts
Blogs are rapidly becoming an important part of any online
presence. Blogs usually put a heavy demand on networks and
servers because of their nature. For example they require
capabilities for rapid content updates and heavy traffic.
Webmasters will need to be especially sure that their host’s
network is scalable enough to handle the load.

THE SEARCH FOR MORE INTERNET SURFING TIPS. Searching for Cool Websites

Web surfing?It is now considered both an art and an exact
science. Millions of people are now connected through the
internet. There are millions of homepages/websites that are
available to a web surfer. Web sites can range from domestic,
commercial and academic to government networks, personal and
service oriented.

The internet, which was once a military and academic experiment,
became phenomenal during the 1990s. Right now, it is part of
our daily routines. We send and receive emails, chat, download
mp3s, file share, do research, buy and sell stuff and do a
thousand more activities through the internet. The internet
revolutionized the idea of having a globalized community. It had
such a profound impact on our worldviews, on the cultures and
ideas of the world and on other various fields.

There are a million possibilities in the internet. How are you
using it? Are you running out of websites to surf? Do you want
to maximize your time at the internet cafe? Do you think that
there are fewer and fewer websites that are cool nowadays? Are
down to checking your mail, chatting and downloading mp3s? Do
you want to do more than that? Here are some down and dirty
tricks to maximize your cyber surfing experience:

1. Use Search Engines.

Specific search engines can give you specific results. Google is
one that has the most number and the fastest hits. However,
there are times when Google hits are too many that you get more
garbage than actual useful results. Using a couple of search
engines is also important. Having a specific search engine for
your local searches will help reduce unwanted hits. Yahoo is a
good way of handling most of your image searches. Most search
engines also have local versions. You can know it by looking for
the countrys code in the URL. It is preceded by a dot.
Examples of these are .kr for Korea, .ca for Canada, .sg for
Singapore, etc. You should know your countrys country code.
There are also search engines that look through other search
engines. One example of this is Meta Crawler. Search engines
have different lists of homepages, so its also good if you try
and search more than one.

2. Pay attention to Links.

Did you ever search for a band? Try looking at their list of
links. These links can be gateways to other similar-genre bands.
Most of the homepages available in the internet have LINKS
dedicated to other websites under the similar fields or
additional information that complements the website. What are
the sites that you are currently searching? What are your
interests? Try your favorite website, look for links and try
jumping from one link to another.

3. Make a list of your interests.

Oftentimes, people surf the internet without thinking much about
their interests. IF you try and jot down all the fields that you
are interested in, then you will have a bigger chance of finding
cool websites. Are you interested in underground film making? Do
you want to watch video streams of your favorite TV show? Then
try searching for them. Remember that your interests are the
?cool things for you.

4. Use proxies if sites are blocked.

You might be surfing the net through a firewall. In this case,
you might not maximize your internet experience because many
sites and hits are filtered out. If you are trying to search
sites while at work, chances are the computer network that you
are using has lots of restrictions. Proxies can help you search
restricted and filtered sites anonymously. Some proxies need a
proxy software which can be downloaded for free while some offer
free proxy websites. There are also those that require you to
subscribe for a minimum fee.

5. Pay attention to details.

When I searched for Pantera, I learned about Phil Anselmo so I
searched engines about him where I saw the name Seth Putnam
mentioned. I tried searching for him, and thus I found AC which
is his band. Details are clues to other cooler websites. Another
way of maximizing your cyber experience is by doing a random
jump to an event, a person, entity, organization, product, place
or phenomenon which is mentioned.

6. Be equipped.

Some sites cannot open with Firefox or other internet browsers.
Majority of the sites available are either Netscape or Microsoft
Explorer compatible. An updated version of your software is
important too if you want to view new sites. Nowadays, there are
a many sites that run on Flash so its also good to have a
Macromedia Flash installed. Other enhancers that are useful in
surfing the net are firewalls and anti-virus software. Remember
that its better to be safe than sorry. Viruses can keep you
from viewing sites. Eliminate the threats by preparing for them.

A persons surfing habits differ from each other. Your needs
are personal and specific depending on your interests. Moreover,
being cool or having seen a cool website is subject to personal
preference and public opinion. So its good if you know how to
maximize your cyber experience. Enjoy web surfing!