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Monday, March 22, 2010

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How To Easily Track Your Website Visitors

By: Dave Taylor
March 22nd, 2010

I don't have a blog, I don't have a fancy Web site and I don't have a profile on MySpace or Facebook, but I do get people coming to my simple little four-page Web site and I'd like to learn more about them. My sister says I want to run some "analytics" program, but I'm clueless. I can edit HTML, but what do I add?

Dave's Answer:


You are right to be thinking of this stuff. Without some sort of decent analytics it's just about impossible to know who is coming to your site and what they do once they get there. Add one of a number of different free packages, however, and you can extract a surprising amount of information by just poking around when you have the time.

Since you're comfortable with basic HTML, you also have a bit of a proverbial leg up on most folk because you can easily copy and paste the necessary Javascript into the correct spot on your pages without freaking out or breaking things. :-)

So there are a lot of different analytic programs on the market, but what I like is Google Analytics. It's free, it's powerful and it's fast enough loading that there's no performance penalty for your visitors (a big issue in my book). You can sign up for free, but you probably already have a Google account so it's even easier. Find out, go to Google Analytics and sign in / sign up.

Here's what it looks like when you "create new profile"

Go there...
http://www.netdummy.com/2010/03/22/how-to-easily-track-your-website-visitors/

Don

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