Why Web Statistics Are Important for Your Online Business: Part I

Have your own online business and becoming dispirited and demoralized due to poor online sales? I’ve heard that numerous times. While it may seem like virtual business is ‘all that’, being less costly, more accessible, more efficient … some online sellers would agree that their online sales haven’t been as ‘all that’ as they had hoped when they initially ventured into the virtual business realm. Becoming instantly rich through online business has not been the story for every online seller … but … to simply quit is NOT the thing to do!



You have to find out what went wrong and start re-strategizing. The thing is … with the virtual world, we lack visual details for analysis. How can you tell if your advertising efforts were successful or not at drawing in customers to your store when you can’t visually see your customers rushing in? Is your web store getting the crowd it should or do you need to do more marketing? Who are your customers and are they returning to you? Which part of your web store is crucial, which is not? Where to get theses details???

View your WEB STATISTICS!

What are web statistics? Why are they useful / what do they tell you? Where can you get / view them?

Web statistics is a collection of data about your website users’ activity and public details (ip address, browser, operating system, referrer, page title and url etc). They tell you who visits your website, when was your website visited, from where, by how many people, what are they looking for, and more … daily, monthly, quarterly, yearly. If you have your own website, normally it is plugged-in with a web statistical tool like Webalizer, which can be viewed via your CPanel. For those seeking even more statistical information with better graphical charting options you may use free web trackers such as StatCounter, Google Analytics, AWStats, GoStats.

I have personally used both StatCounter and Google Analytics and while both are awesome, I have my heart set on StatCounter for 3 reasons: 1) I’ve used StatCounter long before I decided to give Google Analytics a try – bias; 2) there is a lag in displaying the statistics with Google Analytics which bothers me as I am pretty much an impatient person … StatCounter on the other hand gives me the stats in realtime; & 3) I think we’ve had enough Google invasion in our lives – I would love for other good businesses to soar as well :) In a nutshell, StatCounter is less advertising-centric in its approach versus Google Analytics. For general sellers, I would say that StatCounter is good enough to get you out of your blues of being handicapped in virtual business analysis.



StatCounter gives you:

Invisible Counter Option, Configurable Counter, Configurable Summary Stats, Magnify User, Drill Down, Popular Pages, Entry Pages, Exit Pages, Came From, Keyword Analysis, Recent Keyword Activity, Search Engine Wars, Visitor Paths, Visit Length, Returning Visits, Recent Pageload Activity, Recent Visitor Activity, Country/State/City Stats, Recent Visitor Google Map, ISP Stats, Browser Stats, O.S. Stats, Resolution Stats, JavaScript Stats, Email Reports, Multiple Site Management, User Access Management, Public Stats, Blocking Cookie

Find out about each feature here: http://www.statcounter.com/features/

How do you get StatCounter to track your website activities and let it produce for you your website/blog/store statistics? You just have to create a new project, maybe named My Site and after following the easy steps, in the end you will be given a piece of code (the tracker) to paste in your website code/script that will capture the data for every web visit you get and present them to you in a very user-friendly display when you log in to your StatCounter account. The tracker may be visible (a hit or unique visitor counter) or invisible (for your own personal viewing). To have the stats for your blogspot, just paste the tracker code into the HTML/Javascript gadget and you’re done! If you have your own website that has been developed by a developer and have no knowledge in touching the codes, get them to incorporate the tracker code for you. It’s so simple, so don’t let them charge you nonsensically!

If you have a My1Stop featured e-store (Business or Enterprise package), the StatCounter webstats tracker has already been plugged-in for you. So you'll have the luxury of viewing the complete statistics of their store’s visitor activities & details, complete with weekly e-store stats report in your e-mail.

Can’t handle too much data? I’ll simply things for you. I’ll walk you through key statistics sellers should pay attention to by analyzing the webstats of one of My1Stop e-store’s, e-Farmasi ... in my next post.

TTFN :)

Original Post: http://cwynire.blogspot.com/2009/05/why-web-statistics-are-important-for.html