What are Usage Statistics?
by Mitch Keeler

Usage Statistics are very important to have. They give you endless amounts of data that you can use to shape the future of your own Web site. With a few clicks of the mouse, you can find out if your latest idea is working or what you might need to do to get more visitors to your Web site. Anybody who wants a successful Web site Online needs usage statistics about their visitors.

Thankfully, there is more than one way to skin a cat, and there is more than one way to get your Web site's usage statistics.

The best statistics you could get will probably come from your Web hosting provider. Inside your control panel for your Web hosting account, you should have several options to choose from as far as usage statistics go. Within my own (cPanel) I have: Webalizer Web Stats, AwStats, Analog Stats and others. The most useful one of the bunch is AwStats. It will give you a read out of the number of visitors, what pages they were looking at, at what time, how long did they stay and anything else you might want to know. In my opinion it really is the total package when it comes to usage statistics.

If you Web hosting company's provided control panel is different, you might have a few different or other options to choose from.

Another way of gaining more information from your visitors is through third party tracking services. The best and probably the oldest known is Bravenet. They will offer you many of the same stats you saw mentioned above. All you need to do is paste the counter code onto your Web site and away you go! Easy, wasn't it? Bravenet is not your only option though. There are a plethora of other companies out there who do the same. The hardest part of it, is just finding the one that fits your needs the best.