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Dump That Free Hit Counter And Start Tracking
- Go to http://www.cgi-resources.com
- Click on "Programs and Scripts"
- Click on "Perl"
- Click on "Logging Accesses and Statistics"
You'll be presented with no less than 30 CGI script packages which will help you gather valuable information about your visitors, and believe it or not, most of them are free! We looked at all of them, so we'll save you the time and suggest the two we like best to help you get started.
One of the first scripts we tried, and still one of our favorites, is AXS by Fluid Dynamics. It's one of the first scripts listed and you can't miss it. You can download it for free, and with a minimal amount of effort you could be tracking your entire web site within the next few hours.
The direct URL to the AXS site is http://www.xav.com/scripts/axs Rather than going into detail about it here, we'll let you discover it for yourself. It's a great system and the only thing we don't like about it is that it creates it's own log files, and they get huge if your site is busy.
The alternative is to use something like Darryl Burgdorf's WebLog. The direct URL to this great script is http://awsd.com/scripts/weblog. It does everything AXS does, but it runs off of your existing server logs which makes it easier to set up for most. It's also more efficient.
Both AXS and WebLog will give you all of the information you could ever want about your visitors, and both display this information in a way that is easy for you to interpret using graphs, etc. We encourage you to download and set up one of these scripts to track your web site.
My Site Is Being Tracked, What Next?
The point of tracking your site is to act on the information you gather and use it to improve your web site's effectiveness. If you discover that 80% of your visitors aren't making it past your home page, or that the average person leaves within 2 minutes, you now have your work cut out for you.
The real value of tracking your visitor's footsteps is that it will help you determine why they did not take the action that you wanted them to take. Once you see how most people navigate your web site, you can then make changes until the path they take is the one you want.
Spend some time implementing a good tracking system on your site, because if you can increase your visitor-to-sales ratio even just a few percentage points it will be more than worth your time. Remember, it doesn't matter how many hits you get if your site doesn't do its job.