How to Analyze Your Log Files

"What should I look at when analyzing my website traffic?" If you manage a website, this question is likely on your mind. Especially if you've ever spent an afternoon digging through your log files trying to extract useful information.

A Use these key stats to better manage and market your e-business site:
1. Number of Unique Visitors

Monitor this number to determine if the activity level on your site is increasing, decreasing or staying the same. Then use this information to measure the impact of your marketing efforts.

Remember to filter:

* Traffic created by internal visitors
* Traffic created by search engine spiders

Need help spotting spiders? Try this resource:

* Search Engine World: Spiders Crawlers and Indexers! [http://www.searchengineworld.com/spiders/]

2. Home Page Click-Through Rate

Use your Top Entry Page and Single Page Access stats to see how many visitors entering through your Home page never go beyond it. Knowing this number will help you measure the effectiveness of your current Home page - and future changes to it.

You can also use your log files to track and measure the click-through rate of your other top entry and single access pages - providing you with the opportunity to enhance them accordingly.

* Learn how to calculate your click-through rate [http://www.popinteractive.com/webinsights/20020516.asp]

3. Average Length Per Visit & Page Views Per Visitor

What changes would you make to your site if you knew that your average visitor:

* Spends less than 45 seconds on any single page
* Often only visits a total of three or four pages?

Analyze your stats to determine what the actual usage patterns are for your site, and make decisions about your content accordingly.

Why so fast and so few? Visitors are extremely goal oriented and task driven when they use the Web. They will quickly scan a page to determine if it contains or links to the information they want. If scanning the page does not convince them they're on the right track they will abandon the page -- and frequently the site.

Learn more about average usage habits:

* Nielsen//NetRatings: Global Internet Index Average Usage [http://www.nielsen-netratings.com/news.jsp?section=dat_gi]

4. Least and Most Visited Pages

Monitoring these stats can help you identify usability and navigation problems with your site - and measure the impact of the changes you make to address these problems.

To see how even a small change can increase the traffic to any page, we suggest identifying a key page you would like to drive more visitors to and modifying your Home page to give the link to it more prominence. Then use your stats to monitor the impact.
5. Most Submitted Forms and Scripts

Knowing and understanding your site statistics is great, but conversion is what really counts. Tracking the number of forms submitted over time can help you determine if the work you're doing to increase traffic is actually resulting in more leads and business.
6. Top Referring Sites and URLs

Use these statistics to uncover hidden opportunities for increasing traffic to your site. One way to do this is to identify the top referring sites and see if you can negotiate better placement of the link to your site. This can be quite worthwhile if their audience is the audience you wish to target.

Referring sites may also contribute to your traffic by increasing your popularity rating with search engines. However, before you start investing time in trading links, we recommend you read this article about link popularity - and link importance:

* NetMechanic: Increase Search Engine Rank With Link Popularity [http://www.netmechanic.com/news/vol3/promo_no16.htm]

7. Top Referring Search Engines

If most of the traffic coming to your site from search engines isn't being sent from Yahoo, Google, AOL and MSN, you may need to review your search engine placement. Most e-business sites receive a majority of their search engine traffic from these four because they have the majority of search engine audience share.

* See how the search engines compare:
Search Engine Watch: Nielsen//NetRatings Search Engine Ratings [http://www.searchenginewatch.com/reports/article.php/2156451]
* Learn the essentials of search engine marketing with this guide from Danny Sullivan, editor of Search Engine Watch. [http://www.searchenginewatch.com/webmasters/]

8. Top Search Words and Phrases

Paying attention to the keywords and phrases that are and aren't included in your site statistics can pay off. One of our clients had a mention of "winter hats" on his site but did not realize how many people were searching for "winter hats" until we helped him analyze his statistics. This information resulted in the client modifying his site to better serve and sell to his audience.

In the Spring, we did not see "mesh hats" - one of his important products - in his keyword statistics. As a result, we were able to optimize his site for "mesh hats" right in time for Summer. "Mesh hats" are currently one of his best performing products -- and keywords.
9. Errors

Monitoring your error messages is clearly important as it can help you identify problems in your code or on your server.

Use these references to translate your error codes:

* http://www.cybraryn.com/tools/httpstat.htm [http://www.cybraryn.com/tools/httpstat.htm]
[Editor's Note: This link is no longer available.]
* HTTP Status Codes from MSDN[http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/shared/deeptree/bot/bot.asp?dtcnfg=/library/deeptreeconfig.xml]

10. Browsers and Platforms

Browser compatibility issues and backwards support is an ongoing issue for website managers. And, on complex sites, addressing these issues can require a significant investment of time.

Monitoring the browsers and platforms used by your visitors is key to setting and updating your minimum browser requirements.

Use these references to see how the trends on your site compare to others:

* Browser News [http://www.upsdell.com/BrowserNews/stat_trends.htm]
* TheCounter.com [http://www.thecounter.com/stats/2002/July/browser.php]

Site Analysis Resources
References

* Jupiter: U.S. Top 50 Web Properties Unique Visitor Stats [http://jupiterresearch.com/xp/jmm/press/mediaMetrixTop50.xml]
[Editor's: This link is no longer available.]
* WebMonkey: Log File Lowdown [http://hotwired.lycos.com/webmonkey/01/24/index4a.html?tw=e-business]
* How To Know When Google Last Indexed Your Page [http://ihelpyouservices.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=3628]
* SearchEngineWatch.com: Measuring Link Popularity [http://www.searchenginewatch.com/webmasters/article.php/2167951]
* CIO: Monday is Net’s Busiest Day [http://www2.cio.com/metrics/2002/metric377.html]

Popular Analysis Software and Web-based Tools

* WebTrends Log Analyzer (From $499) [http://www.netiq.com/products/log/default.asp]
[Editor's Note: This link and price are no longer available. The current product is now called WebTrends Analytics.]
* Urchin (From $695) [http://www.urchin.com/]

More Affordable Analysis Option:

* MyComputer.com SuperStats (From $99 per year) [http://www.mycomputer.com/index2.html/]

Higher-End Analysis Tools:

* SPSS: NetGenesis [http://www.spss.com/netgenesis/]
* Accrue Software [http://www.accrue.com]
* HitBox Outsourced Web Analytics [http://www.websidestory.com/]

The Lighter Side of the Web

For those online managers looking to combine their dedication to the Web with some summer recreational activities, we suggest a round of Mini Golf. [http://www.people.fas.harvard.edu/%7epyang/flash/miniputt.swf] [Editor's Note: We're sad to report that this diversion is no longer available.]


* Multiple Browsers - Internet Explorer, Opera, FireFox and Safari.
* Different Browser Versions
* Different Computer Platforms - Windows, Mac, and now Linux.
* Screen Size - From 800 x 600 pixels to 1024 x 768.
* HTML Errors - Mistakes that break your page.
* Browser Bugs - Little known errors cause big problems.

http://www.netmechanic.com/news/vol4/promo_no11.htm

Load Time 64.45 seconds, Detailed Report
height/width problems

HTML Check & Repair 0 errors Detailed Report

Browser Compatibility 6 problems Detailed Report

Spell Check 27 possible errors.
Espa�ol, Italiano, Portugu�s, Detailed Report