Heating Things Up – Put another Log in Your  File Or How to maximize profits by using the data your website hosting company already collects.

I am relatively new to the on-line marketing world so I still have a lot of those “I didn’t know that” moments. Well here’s another one. Last week after reading a article (re-printed below) from somewhere on the Internet I promptly fired off an email to my Web Hosting Co. http://www.chillydomains.com/ I finally got around to looking at their reply the other day & was positively amazed at the amount of useful information they were able to provide. (See the screen shots below) The article I had read stated that most website hosting companies routinely monitor the traffic coming & going from the domains they host & all you have to do is ask them for it. Well for me the information in that article was dead on. They (Chillydomains.com) provided me with a web-site address that’s available to 24-7. http://——–.com/plesk-stat/webstat/ There is no additional charge as its part of the service they provided with the Chillyspace 1000 package. Consequently I feel compelled to share this information with you even though I can’t tell you who wrote it or where I got it from.  Since I never intended to re-publish it I did not save in my normal fashion. Please forgive me & accept my apology in advance for this complete lack of professional courtesy. Anyway here it is.

Article copied from somewhere on the internet:

Anyone with a website wants & needs information on the traffic coming & going from their website. Almost everyone with a website already knows this. So why waste time telling you something you already know? That’s a fair question. Here’s my fair answer.

Increasing your return on investment (R.O.I.) can be improved by paying close attention to your website log files. Specifically the traffic patterns of your customers. It really doesn’t matter what the purpose of your web site is either. This information can be every bit as useful to a commercial website selling products & services as it is to a “non-profit” web site supplying news & information only. Bottom line…… This information is critical to the success of your on-line business!

Most of us think that obtaining this information will involve spending a great deal of time and money, & it can. But the good news is it doesn’t have to. Fortunately all most all website hosting companies have software installed that will process and display this information. You’re hosting company needs this information as much as you do. But the information they are looking for will be of a more general nature. Consequently if you went looking for this information right this minute you would no doubt find it. The problem is knowing where to look for it & then getting it displayed in a format that’s easy to read & comprehend. The information you need will be far more specific & detailed than the information your hosting company is using. You need to be able to drill down in to these reports & retrieve very specific bits of information.

From this information you will get a good understanding as to how many people are visiting your website, where they are coming from, where they enter and exit the website, the average number of page views per visit, how long are they staying, basically any information you need or want. It is really just a matter of getting a report built that is easy for you to understand & use. Once this report is built however don’t think your work is done. Far from it as you’re actually just getting started.  This will be a work in progress for a very long time if not forever. Once you start using & acting on this information you will learn what data is relevant & what isn’t, additional details you need, improvements to the layout & how it is presented, etc.

Please stay tuned. Tomorrow I’ll give you the specific information needed to build this report & implement it into your overall marketing strategy.

Matt

Email to Chilly Domain 9.16.09

I would like to make a report using data from your existing log files that will show me the traffic coming and going from web sites and possibly the traffic from my sub domains as well. It would appear these reports already exist but I may need to modify them to get the information I am looking for. Specifically I would like to know: From where do my readers enter, i.e. from Google, from Yahoo, Bing, from other sites, etc. Where do they exit? From the home page, from another website that linked to website, etc. How long do they stay? How many times do they click on links or objects? Etc. Do you track key words? Any information that can help me fine-tune my marketing would be helpful .

Thank you for the help.

Matt

Reply from Chilly Domain 9.24.09

Dear Mr. Matt

Under http://———.com/plesk-stat/webstat/ you can see a detailed report of your visitors. The statistics include rates of your sub-sites, search bots, browsers and URLs, where visitors come from. As an alternative you can look for WordPress plug-ins, which also offer statistics for your wordpress blog (http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/).

If you have any further questions, feel free to ask.

Best regards,
chillysupport