Do You Know Who's Looking At Your Website?
Overview of this week's e-Newsletter
Have you ever wondered who was looking at your website and what pages they might be looking? These are some important questions just about any website owner would be able to answer as they are essential in the success of your website. Therefore this week I'm going to go over a few programs out there that you can use to see who is looking at your website and what they're looking at.

Why Is Knowing Who's On Your Site Important?
Why is it important to know who is looking at your website.
Knowing who is looking at your website and what they are viewing is actually an important part of running a successful website. There are dozens of reasons why you might what to see who's visiting your site but here are a few keys.

For one, knowing if there are actually people viewing your site is a good start. Imagine having a store front but your blind and you can't hear, you'll never know if someone came in. It's a little bit tough to run any company that way and a website is much the same. Knowing that people are using your site is an indicator that they can find it. And if they're using it then you're getting some sort of return off the website even if it's just letting people know what you do.

Second, knowing where visitors came from to get to your site puts you in control of increasing your website traffic. Most website visitor and web counter stats let you know how the visitors got to your website. When you know where they're coming from you can use that data to know what areas are working in getting you visitors and what areas need to be strengthened.

Third, knowing what your visitors are doing on your site will better enable you to control what you want your visitors to see when they view your site. Again most website visitor and counter stats let you view this data. With that data you can spot how people navigate through your site. Knowing what pages they view can help you to make decisions as to changes that might better give viewers what they are looking for or present them with information you want them to know.

Overview of Website Visitor Stats Programs!
Here is an overview of a few visitor and hit counter stats software.
As you can probably image there are tons of programs and pieces of software out there related to looking at and getting website visitor stats. Over the years I've try and looked at quite a few of them. So I'd like to give you a short list of some of the best recent one's I've come across.

1. Google Analytics - Google provides this free visitor stats program which is actually quite good. You can view where people came from, what search terms they used if they came from a search engine, and data specific to the viewer such as his location and language. All of this is data is viewed from the Google Analytics website where there are lots of charts and graphs. And the graphs/charts are quite aesthetically pleasing as well as user friendly.
   
   
2. Visistat.com - This stats program is quite interesting they offer almost everything you can get with Google Analytics but all of the data is in real time (Google Analytics has a 24 hour delay). With this program you can see that someone is viewing your site right when their doing it! It also gives a lot more data on the visitor, their computer, location, ect... You can even give save specific visitor's identities and nickname them so that you know when they come back and you can monitor how they use the site. The graphical design of the program is also quite nice. The only downside to this is that this program is not free. Currently their rate is about $19.95 a month.
   
   
3. W3counter.com - This is another stats program offering almost everything Google and Visistat has to offer minus a few features here and there. Although they are not as aesthetically pleasing as Visistat the program still looks quite aesthetic. Although what's best about W3counter.com is that you get great visitor stat features all in real time for free. You can view exactly who is online on your site and what their doing right now as well as lots of other data on who's visitors your site in the past. It even gives you a map of the locations of those who visited your website.
   
   
4. GetClickly.com - Another stats program with much of the same features as the others. But what's different about this site is in the way the visitor stats data is organized. This program displays visitors movement through your site as what they call "actions". So you can view all of the actions a visitor has taken - such as going from the home page to the contact page and then to an about us page. This is also a free service.
   

Well, that's certainly not a complete list but it should give you a few programs to look into if you don't already have a visitor stats program.

Final Words
Ending comments
In conclusion I hope this newsletter gives you some tools and ideas from which you can keep growing your company and online presence.

And as always, look for next week's newsletter where we hope to provide you with more useful tips and advice. If you have any suggestions about topics you would like to hear more about please send us an email with your thoughts.