Dump That Free Hit Counter
And Start Tracking
It seems that every other web site we visit has some sort of hit counter
on the main page, supposedly telling us how many people have been there
before us. This week we're going to address this popular trend, explain
why you don't need one, and what you should be doing instead.
Most Internet marketers will normally implement a hit counter on their
site for one or both of two reasons -- to give them a rough estimate of
the number of visitors, and/or to give visitors the impression that their
site is popular and thus worthy of a good look.
Let's consider the first reason. There is nothing wrong with wanting
to know how many people have visited your web site, in fact it's something
that you really do need to know. But putting a visible hit counter on
your home page is not the answer, especially not one of those free services.
For one thing, the free services require you to in some way promote their
site. For another, they are normally slow and increase the time it takes
for your pages to load. But most importantly, a hit counter doesn't provide
you with all of the information you need.
Just look at any of the top web sites on the Internet. We promise that
you will not find a visible hit counter on any of them! That alone should
tell you that the common hit counter is worthless. If a visible counter
was worthwhile, don't you think Yahoo or Infoseek would have one?
You just can't win with a visible hit counter. If your site does not
get many visitors, all it's going to do is make sure that the visitors
you do get know that they are not visiting a popular site. If anything,
all this will do is discourage them from exploring your web site in detail.
On the other hand, maybe your site gets 50,000 visitors a day and you
think that letting people know this via a hit counter is a good idea.
Not really. If your web site gets lots of traffic it is because you are
doing something right, and having a hit counter isn't going to affect
this.
Unfortunately, what normally happens is that the misguided Internet marketer
will set up a visible hit counter on their home page and then artificially
inflate their visitor count. This is done in the hopes that it will impress
people, but it's a terribly bad idea and does not work.
In the early days of the web it was "cool" to have a hit counter
on your home page, but they are so commonplace these days that no one
pays them any attention anyway. No matter what your reason for using a
visible hit counter, we say dump it and start tracking!
Tracking Visitors' Footsteps
While Yahoo and Infoseek don't have visible counters on their pages,
rest assured that they know your every move. No other advertising medium
allows you to do the things the Internet does, and it amazes us that more
marketers do not take advantage of serious site tracking.
Part of the problem seems to be that many Internet marketers are only
concerned with promoting their web site and getting more people to visit.
More visitors equals more sales right? Well yes that is true, but only
if your web site leads visitors through the sales process.
Before you even begin promoting a web site, you should have in your mind
the path that you want visitors to take through your site. Sales is a
process. One step leads to the next, until finally the end result is hopefully
that what was once just a prospect is now a customer.
Tracking your visitor's footsteps throughout your web site is the best
way to determine why they didn't take the action that you wanted them
to take. Who knows, maybe 80% of your visitors aren't even making it past
your introductory page? You'll never know unless you track them.
Consider this another Internet marketing rule that is written in stone.
If you're not tracking your entire web site and tweaking it on a regular
basis, you're throwing money down the proverbial drain. From a profit
standpoint, it is critical that you know the answers to questions like:
- How do visitors find your site in the first place?
- How many of them make it past the main page?
- Which page of your site is the most popular?
- How long does the average visitor stick around?
- What is the average number of pages viewed?
- What path do visitors take through your site?
- What links do they use to leave your site?
If you don't know the answers to these simple questions, here's an easy
way to increase your profits starting immediately. And the good news is
that it may not cost you anything other than some time. We're going to
show you how to use free CGI scripts to ultimately increase sales!
While you don't really need to learn anything technical to use the scripts
we're going to suggest, you do need to be able to run CGI scripts on your
web server. If you have no idea what CGI scripts are, ask your ISP. If
they say no, we strongly suggest that you find a new ISP.
If you haven't realized it by now, we are a big fan of CGI scripts because
they are what allows you to add interactivity to your web site. But CGI
scripts can also help you do many other things, like track your visitors'
footsteps. Let's see what we can get for free at CGI-Resources ...
- Go to http://www.cgi-resources.com
- Click on "Programs and Scripts"
- Click on "Perl"
- Click on "Logging Accesses and Statistics"
You'll be presented with no less than 30 CGI script packages which will
help you gather valuable information about your visitors, and believe
it or not, most of them are free! We looked at all of them, so we'll save
you the time and suggest the two we like best to help you get started.
One of the first scripts we tried, and still one of our favorites, is
AXS by Fluid Dynamics. It's one of the first scripts listed and you can't
miss it. You can download it for free, and with a minimal amount of effort
you could be tracking your entire web site within the next few hours.
The direct URL to the AXS script is http://www.xav.com/scripts/axs
-- rather than going into detail about it here, we'll let you discover
it for yourself. It's a great system and the only thing we don't like
about it is that it creates it's own log files, and they get huge if your
site is busy.
The alternative is to use something like Darryl Burgdorf's WebLog. The
direct URL to this great script is http://awsd.com/scripts/weblog
-- and it does everything AXS does, but it runs off of your existing server
logs which makes it easier to set up for most. It's also more efficient.
Both AXS and WebLog will give you all of the information you could ever
want about your visitors, and both display this information in a way that
is easy for you to interpret using graphs, etc. We encourage you to download
and set up one of these scripts to track your web site.
My Site Is Being Tracked, What Next?
The point of tracking your site is to act on the information you gather
and use it to improve your web site's effectiveness. If you discover that
80% of your visitors aren't making it past the first page, or that the
average person leaves within 2 minutes, you now have your work cut out
for you.
The real value of tracking your visitor's footsteps is that it will help
you determine why they did not take the action that you wanted them to
take. Once you see how most people navigate your web site, you can then
make changes until the path they take is the one you want.
Spend some time implementing a good tracking system on your site, because
if you can increase your visitor-to-sales ratio even just a few percentage
points it will be more than worth your time. Remember, it doesn't matter
how many hits you get if your site doesn't do its job.
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Originally published in IMC's Internet Marketing Chronicles.
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