The Importance of Analytics and Stats Tracking
One of the first steps in creating a new blog, and any web project, for that matter, is to add tracking and statistics (analytics) to the HTML file or through a method that can directly track the site’s visitors through an external application. But, why is it truly essential to track your visitors from day one?
While you may be a tracking “junkie”, there is really no need to track each individual user unless you want an interactive and thorough level of understanding your visitors (I used to do that . This becomes nearly impossible as your blog grows to a point that it receives more than a thousand visitors daily—no one has the time to keep up with the constant inflow of new traffic.
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Putting the stat-aholic aside, the main reason that you’ll want to add the tracking widget to your site is for tracking trends. You’ll want to know, in a snapshot view, the results of different “campaigns”, posts and social bookmarking/networking stumbles and diggs. Without these trends, you cannot grow your site, neither do you know if you are pleasing your visitors (resulting in a general increase in traffic) or targeting the right keywords.
One of the second main factors that you’ll want to consider in the decision to track your visitors is the long-term goals of your website. If you are planning on keeping the website forever, it is likely that you won’t be concerned about traffic and demographics. However, if at any point down the road you want to sell your site by putting it up for auction or sell it directly to a buyer, they will nearly always want to see some sort of proof (from your side) that you do in fact receive the amount of traffic that you claim. Without this proof, you have no basis to sell your site.
Finally, although you generally form your visitor base with the content you write, implementing a statistics program on your site will benefit you by allowing you to more accurately target a market, whether in a specific country, age group, or lifestyle (earnings, home value, etc.). Out of all factors, this may be the biggest reason to begin tracking your site today—you will be able to capture a new target audience, potentially one that has never been tapped before.
Conclusion
It is important to remember that whatever analytics program you use, whether free, such as Google Analytics(up to five million page views/month), Site Meter (more in-depth starting at 25K pageviews), Stat Counter (up to 500 pageview log/250K pageviews/monthly); there are limitations of each. There is no replacement for knowing the exact numbers of visitors by placing the code directly on your site.
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only just recently I keep track my visitors trend.. it’s look like, my content is not good enough.. people just come and go..
indeed. i also wonder what i can do to make my pages more sticky, so my bounce rate won’t be so high.
I would use Google analytic for personal which gives best result. The best way to start is using their campaign feature and accomplishing the task.
Wow you are professional, I’m still learning how to use that difficult stuff…
i don’t put these tracker on my blog because they make my blog slow loaded
I don’t think so. I said about the reasons above.
Analytic codes are added at Footer which is loaded after all the other files are loaded.
So technically, the readers will get the content before the tracking is done.
I’m surprise when I saw my site has 60%+ Chinese visitor, I thought it’s because of I’m Chinese
Haha just kidding, but it’s really important to have a statistic record as it shows you both expected and surprised truth.
An clear article with original thought, thank for your sharing!
Thnx for sharing
You can also use Woopra tracking system.It’s awesome man.but it takes some time for your blog to get approved in their system like 2-3 weeks but nevertheless you get superb blog tracking.
One more which i forgot to say that using Google Analytics slows down your blog which i don like but still i m using it because it is “Google”
I have never found this difficulty for using Google analytic. Definitely there should be other reason which causing your site speed down.
yeah… it is very useful info
Thanks for the post, this helps out a lot of us.
There’s also Woopra: http://woopra.com. It’s perfect if you are a tracking “junky”, as you said above
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So … you’re a tracking junkie, aren’t you?
lol
Your infos are useful…thanks a lot!
from tracking script I found out that I receive visitor from all round the world, I know their geographic, I hope more sophisticated tracking code, I hope the track capable of finding whether my visitora male or female , maybe single or married, so I can find out if she (if my visitor is female) like my blog or she like me
lol
You need a very customized script or you can install polling system to detect whether the visitors are male or female.
This way you will come to know how much female loves you… or ??1!!??? LoL
Still the visitor might not enter the right answer. Its not fool proof. We want a system where the browser can detect whether the visitor is male or female from their Bookmarks, Emals and personal stuffs
Google has it all.
… I tried Woopra once .. well I tried to try them .. After a two week wait to get activited I shrugged them off.
I’ve been using Google Analytics for almost all my sites/blogs
very nice
thank u
Is the hosting stats is different from these stat counters.
I use hostgator and checking their stats in cpanel. Is it accurate?