8. Website Statistics

Each time a user visits your web site, he or she leaves an electronic trail behind. These trails are stored, along with all your other data, at your site host or server. If you ever try to read the server log all you will see is a jumble of http requests, client IP addresses and other information that, at a first glance, appears unintelligible. Fortunately, a number of companies have developed software to analyze the server logs and organize them into easy to read charts and graphs.

What you will find when you review this info is incredibly valuable marketing data. You can find out which Search Engines are sending you traffic and what keywords the visitors are typing into the search box. You can find out the time of day that they visit, how long they stay, what path they take through the site. You can see what percentage uses Macs or Windows, their screen resolution, their browser version. In other words, you will be presented more information than you will know what to do with.

The Internet is the only advertising medium that can deliver such accurate and reveling demographics. Use them to improve your site navigation, tweak your keyword and keyword phrases, change the text size etc.

Once you learn what people are looking for, how they navigate your site and where your visitors are from, you will have a greater advantage of fulfilling their expectations through your website business.

Proceed to Step 9 - Forum & Newsgroups

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