Web analytics, or site statistics is a field that is shrouded in mystery to some people. There are lots of experts that make it seem like you need to have a PhD in computer science in order to get data from your website. Thankfully, you don’t need a PhD, nor a MS, all you need is some time and the right analytics package.

What’s the right package?

There is no cut and dry answer to this question. The right package is the one that gives you the information that you need and want when you need it and in a format that you can use. All web analytics software measures traffic in slightly different ways, but all things being equal they will all tell you how people are using your site.

OK, how about some names?

Let’s look at what in my opinion are the 3 best and easiest options to implement. We will start off with the 800lb gorilla of analytics and move on down the list:

Google Analytics: This is probably the most comprehensive free tool available. All you need is a Google account and you’re good to go. Basically, you add your site, then you copy and paste a small javascript snippet to the page footer on your website and Google Analytics does the rest. It tracks your visitors and splits them into first time visitors, repeat visitors and unique visitors, it also gives you a complete breakdown of your bounce rate by keywords which lets you target some keywords better. You can create custom reports with alerts and other measurements to keep you appraised on your site’s performance. Another neat feature is that you can integrate your adsense and adwords account and get a full blown picture of your performance all in one spot.

AWstats: Usually, your hosting provider will give you this analytics package for free and by default. It runs at the server level and produces some really pretty graphs. The downside of this package is that you cannot create any custom reports, but it does show you in a clear format how many visitors came to your site. Unfortunately, it doesn’t tell you how many of these visitors were first timers or repeat visitors, so there’s no real way to tell if you’re being effective at creating regular readers/ visitors.

WP-Stats: This is a plugin that is exclusive to WordPress sites. It can run on your wordpress.com hosted site or on your wordpress.org powered site. This plugin gives you information as it pertains to your wordpress site such as your most popular post, where people are clicking to leave your site and also tells you where people are coming to your site from. Like awstats, it doesn’t tell you how many repeat visitors you’re getting and it also doesn’t allow you to create custom reports.

One of these 3 analytics packages should give you enough information to start optimizing your website. Since all 3 of them are free and they work without stepping on each other’s toes you can use all 3 of them at the same time to get a full and well rounded picture of your site’s performance.

Would you like some help with getting analytics software up and running on your site? Contact us for more information.