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What are web stats, and why bother with them?:
Whenever anyone visits your webpage the server (where your webpage is stored, such as Freeola) stores various bits of information about the visit. This information can include how the person got to your website, how long they spent looking at it, where they are in the world etc. If you have a business website this is valuable information, or if your website is a personal homepage, it's fun to find out this kind of thing.
Freeola doesn't provide this service themselves, but luckily with a bit of javascript added to your site (don't worry you don't need to know javascript, I don't) Stat Counter will gather the data for you instead.
What's so great about Stat Counter?:
Well it's free, and that's a good start.
The site is well laid out and I found it easy to find what I wanted. All the pages you've added to their system are listed together, with a brief summary of how many visits each has had recently.
You can add as many pages as you like, I have each individual page for each of my websites (my work website, held at the University where I work; my personal page, and the page for my own small business which are both held at Freeola) and for each of these I can find out:
- how many visits there have been (page loads, unique visits and returning visitors)
- where those people came from to get to my page
- which search engine terms were used to find my page
- how long people stayed looking at the page
- where in the world they are (country, region and city)
-and more!
You can also find out the paths people took through your website, and a summary of your most popular pages.
Some of these have graphs (pie charts and histograms) to show at a glance what's happening.
How easy is it to set up?: Very. For each page you add there's a form to fill in. The form's quite long, but not difficult. Then a piece of javascript is generated automatically, and they give you instructions on how to add it to your site.
Stat Counter don't add advertising to your site, and you don't have to have any kind of button or link to them (I don't). They say they make their money by advertising within their own site, and by people upgrading to their paid service.
Hope people find this helpful!
Jo
xx
What are web stats, and why bother with them?:
Whenever anyone visits your webpage the server (where your webpage is stored, such as Freeola) stores various bits of information about the visit. This information can include how the person got to your website, how long they spent looking at it, where they are in the world etc. If you have a business website this is valuable information, or if your website is a personal homepage, it's fun to find out this kind of thing.
Freeola doesn't provide this service themselves, but luckily with a bit of javascript added to your site (don't worry you don't need to know javascript, I don't) Stat Counter will gather the data for you instead.
What's so great about Stat Counter?:
Well it's free, and that's a good start.
The site is well laid out and I found it easy to find what I wanted. All the pages you've added to their system are listed together, with a brief summary of how many visits each has had recently.
You can add as many pages as you like, I have each individual page for each of my websites (my work website, held at the University where I work; my personal page, and the page for my own small business which are both held at Freeola) and for each of these I can find out:
- how many visits there have been (page loads, unique visits and returning visitors)
- where those people came from to get to my page
- which search engine terms were used to find my page
- how long people stayed looking at the page
- where in the world they are (country, region and city)
-and more!
You can also find out the paths people took through your website, and a summary of your most popular pages.
Some of these have graphs (pie charts and histograms) to show at a glance what's happening.
How easy is it to set up?: Very. For each page you add there's a form to fill in. The form's quite long, but not difficult. Then a piece of javascript is generated automatically, and they give you instructions on how to add it to your site.
Stat Counter don't add advertising to your site, and you don't have to have any kind of button or link to them (I don't). They say they make their money by advertising within their own site, and by people upgrading to their paid service.
Hope people find this helpful!
Jo
xx