Website owners --- ask yourself a question ---

... Do you really know how much traffic your site gets? If you've got banner ads running on other people's websites, do you know how many times your banner was clicked? The most common answer is to use a hit counter, but these too often misstate the true amount of traffic on your site, and are thus counterproductive.

Unfortunately, this is a very underappreciated task of managing a Website. Many times, developers will throw some pages together and expect miracles to happen. The bottom line of creating any Web project is gauging its effectiveness and ability to reach its intended audiences.

Like any other traditional advertising medium, you want to be on top of your game by knowing exactly who's visiting your site and interacting with you. If you're into web advertising, you need to know if the site you're on is visited consistently enough to justify your investment. Analyzing traffic logs is the main tool that web producers use to determine the traffic and activity levels on their sites. Basically, a logfile is a plaintext file, generated by the Web server a site sits on, which records every instance of an online user browsing, downloading or interacting with your Website.

Types of server logfiles

Logfiles that are of major concern to Web owners are:

ACCESS_LOG	*- records of all of the hits, pages accessed, describes all inbound users by IP address*
REFERER_LOG	*- lists all the search engines that were used by users to find your site on the web and what search strings they entered to find your site*
AGENT_LOG	*- profiles the technical demographics of the computers used to access your Website, usually the type of Web browser and client operating system*
ERROR_LOG	*- a listing of the errors that people experienced while on your site, such as trying to access deleted pages or graphics, or trying top access non-existent URLs*

With this information, you can measure the effectiveness of each of your pages to ensure all your online features are properly marketed and highly trafficked. This can dually be used for quality control in identifying problem areas and bottlenecks that prevent your users from enjoying the best possible online experience with your site. You can then target and expand your online audience and get a better feel for what exactly people look for on your site. For those less-popular pages, you'll be able to know which ones need more attention, and possibly determine when to drop dead weight for unprofitable areas of your site. You can also use this data to optimize your site so it can better serve the masses. With this knowledge in hand, you can then pass this on to your web advertising clients, to justify their investment with your site. This results in better quality control, and more revenue opportunities for your organizational site.

For example, we've discovered that more than 88% of the 28,000 hits that KUAM.COM gets everyday stem from PCs running Windows-based operating systems with Microsoft Internet Explorer 5 or higher. No big surprise there, but it helps to know. If you're interested in finding out exactly what's going on with your site, here's what you need: check with your ISP (Internet service provider) or Web Host provider and see if you already have access to the raw logfiles themselves. If not, see if they can set it up. The next thing you'll need is a program to run a report on your traffic levels. Traffic analysis software ranges from free to $15 to $40,000, so shop around get some help.

For you Webmasters, there are lots of scripts you can use to incorporate into your Web project to dynamically statistics on how your site is doing. This can be either refined or all-out...simple or grandiose. Whatever works for your organixzation to let it better deliver its information.

The bottom line is that you've got to figure out how well (or poorly) you're doing to be able to plan effectively for the future. Having a business Website is all about serving the customer, and knowing the customer, what they use to look at your site, what areas of interest they most frequent and what they would like to see later on is key to making your site a return visit.

So, to summarize: if you've got a website hosted...check with your ISP to see if you have access to your logfiles. If you are a participating in banner advertising, check with the Website you're on and see if they can give you the statistics for how many times your site was accessed. It's your right.

Believe me...once you figure out exactly who's coming to your site (and who's not), and when, this opens up a whole new world of possibilities and opportunities for you to get the most out of your online investment.

Until next week, true believers.....seeya on the 'Net!

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Jason Salas is Web Manager for KUAM.COM. He also owns the Pi Internet Solutions Group, a consulting agency dedicated towards "Internet Evangelism".

He spent the previous 3 years at IT&E in the marketing and business development group of Talaya 2000, Guam’s largest Internet service provider. He intends someday to host Saturday Night Live, with Metallica as the special musical guest.

He has an AAS in Music Theory, a BBA in Marketing, and an MBA in Technology Management from the University of Phoenix.

Comments may be directed to jason@kuam.com

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