How To Read Your Webalizer
Understanding your website traffic
All of our clients who host with SonicSpider are able to monitor their own web traffic through their webalizer.
You can get to your webalizer by typing in your URL and then adding "/webalizer" at the end. For example:
www.sonicspider.com/webalizer
The first page that comes up is your webalizer's home page. This will give you a bird's eye view of your web traffic over the past year.
You want to pay attention to the "visits", which are in yellow in the the upper right hand graph and labeled in yellow in the table below.
You may have heard the common phrase "How many hits does your website get?" . Hits are also represented in the table and graphs, but are not as helpful as visits. A hit represents every time someone clicks something on your website. So one visit may have 30 hits! Hits can give you some idea as to how active people are on your website.
To see detailed results of each month you can click on the month and year (in blue) in the left hand column of the table. This will take you to a page with just the statistics for that month only.
At the top of the monthly statistics page, there is a table with some repeat information that you received on the Home page of your webalizer.
As you scroll down the page you will see several graphs and tables containing different aspects of your website traffic over that month. Some of this information is repetitive or relatively useless as far as giving any sort of feedback. The following are some of the most important tables that we feel our clients should spend their time looking at. If you would iike to review the entire webalizer we can set up a consultation to do that with you.
Most Popular Pages
These are the pages that got the most visits over the course of the month. You will most likely see "./" at the top of the list. This represents the Home page of your website.
After that you will see the file names of your web pages ranked by popularity. If you have any questions about the files names and which pages they represent, please contact us.
This information can be helpful when trying to decide where to put a "Tell a Friend" widget or a newsletter sign up. If you put them on your more popular pages then you will have a greater chance of seeing results.
Top Entry Pages
The Top Entry Pages table will show you where people are entering your website. This will give you some insight as to which pages people are finding through a web search.
More than likely your Home page will be at the top of the list, but your Services or FAQ may be next. By knowing which page people are coming in on, you can go to those pages and make sure they can easily get to the rest of your site from there. Or you may decide that you don't want them coming in on those pages and in which case there are ways to solve that issue, also.
Top Exit Pages
The next important graph that you should look at is theTop Exit Pages for your website. Again your Home page will probably be at the top. Generally, you like to see your Contact page pretty high on the list, because that means that they were interested in your contact information.
By looking at the Top Exit Pages and Top Entry Pages you can start to make educated guesses regarding the activity on your website. Bear in mind, however, that although this input is valuable, there is no way to officially know how a visitor traveled through your website.
You should be checking your webalizer once a month to see the effects of marketing events, such as email campaigns, mailers, business expos, speaking engagements, etc.
If you would like an additional consultation on your webalizer, please contact SonicSpider to set up an appointment. We would be happy to meet with you.
You can get to your webalizer by typing in your URL and then adding "/webalizer" at the end. For example:
www.sonicspider.com/webalizer
The first page that comes up is your webalizer's home page. This will give you a bird's eye view of your web traffic over the past year.
You want to pay attention to the "visits", which are in yellow in the the upper right hand graph and labeled in yellow in the table below.
You may have heard the common phrase "How many hits does your website get?" . Hits are also represented in the table and graphs, but are not as helpful as visits. A hit represents every time someone clicks something on your website. So one visit may have 30 hits! Hits can give you some idea as to how active people are on your website.
To see detailed results of each month you can click on the month and year (in blue) in the left hand column of the table. This will take you to a page with just the statistics for that month only.
At the top of the monthly statistics page, there is a table with some repeat information that you received on the Home page of your webalizer.
As you scroll down the page you will see several graphs and tables containing different aspects of your website traffic over that month. Some of this information is repetitive or relatively useless as far as giving any sort of feedback. The following are some of the most important tables that we feel our clients should spend their time looking at. If you would iike to review the entire webalizer we can set up a consultation to do that with you.
Most Popular Pages
These are the pages that got the most visits over the course of the month. You will most likely see "./" at the top of the list. This represents the Home page of your website.
After that you will see the file names of your web pages ranked by popularity. If you have any questions about the files names and which pages they represent, please contact us.
This information can be helpful when trying to decide where to put a "Tell a Friend" widget or a newsletter sign up. If you put them on your more popular pages then you will have a greater chance of seeing results.
Top Entry Pages
The Top Entry Pages table will show you where people are entering your website. This will give you some insight as to which pages people are finding through a web search.
More than likely your Home page will be at the top of the list, but your Services or FAQ may be next. By knowing which page people are coming in on, you can go to those pages and make sure they can easily get to the rest of your site from there. Or you may decide that you don't want them coming in on those pages and in which case there are ways to solve that issue, also.
Top Exit Pages
The next important graph that you should look at is theTop Exit Pages for your website. Again your Home page will probably be at the top. Generally, you like to see your Contact page pretty high on the list, because that means that they were interested in your contact information.
By looking at the Top Exit Pages and Top Entry Pages you can start to make educated guesses regarding the activity on your website. Bear in mind, however, that although this input is valuable, there is no way to officially know how a visitor traveled through your website.
You should be checking your webalizer once a month to see the effects of marketing events, such as email campaigns, mailers, business expos, speaking engagements, etc.
If you would like an additional consultation on your webalizer, please contact SonicSpider to set up an appointment. We would be happy to meet with you.