A different way of calculating hits is to count the number of times that the main home page has been accessed. This is a much better indicator of real site visits, but it still does not account for locally stored copies of the home page on the visitor's computer (which are not requested from the server on a subsequent visit). It also fails to include visits directly to bookmarked pages other than the home page.
Instead, the approach used here is to attempt to count real visitors to the site. Although the information provided to the Web server does not actually identify unique visitors, a substantial attempt is made to automatically analyse the requested site elements and to formulate a picture of visitor access. This is achieved through some assumptions that are described in the sections below. We believe that despite the imperfections in such a system, this way is far more meaningful in identifying visitor behaviour. It also allows for some extra information to be gleaned, such as the duration of visit.
There may be occasions where the system may not correctly distinguish individual visitors, as may happen when multiple visitors share a proxy server and access the Web site simultaneously. In such a case, multiple visitors will be merged and displayed as a single visitor that accesses many more pages. The occurrence of this is reasonably rare.
If you have difficulty viewing the access statistics, please ensure that Java is enabled on your browser. If you are printing the stats to a colour printer, you will get better results by enabling the printing of background colours on the browser. Both of these settings are accessed through Options or Preferences on your browser.
The date setting at the top allows you to select a date range for which to calculate statistics. Note that if you have a large range, it may take a few minutes to calculate and be rather cluttered. You can improve on this by selecting and displaying a number of date ranges. The information on Web site usage is gathered and summarises every 24 hours at midnight EST. For this reason, stats are only available for the day before and earlier, back to when logging for your site commenced. You cannot select an end date that is today or in the future and any dates that occur before logging commenced on your site will be ignored.
To the right of each graph is a summary of the values displayed. These are:
Each item in the legend shows the page requested relative to the main address of the site. For example, a request for 'http://www.domain.com/abc.html' will be displayed in the graph legend as '/abc.html', and the home page will be displayed as simply a '/'. Database or scripting components will be start with '/cgi-bin/'.
A detailed listing of all requested pages, not just the top few, can be
displayed by clicking the 'List All' link at the bottom of the legend. This
listing will also expand on database requests, offering insight into what parts
of an on-line database visitors are looking at.
This section lists the top sources of visitors, and is very useful for
understanding the nature of people visiting the site. Sometimes you may see the
names of competing companies, or even clients or suppliers.
The number in the coloured square of the legend is the total number of
requests over the date range from a given source. A detailed listing of all
sources of requests, not just the top few, can be displayed by clicking the
'List All' link at the bottom of the legend.
The number in the coloured square of the legend is the total number of
visitors over the date range from a given country. A detailed listing of all
visitors by country, not just the top few, can be displayed by clicking the
'List All' link at the bottom of the legend.
This is an advanced feature.
This is an advanced feature.
The visit time is estimated from the first and last requested pages of a
visit, and the number of pages requested over the visit. There is no way to
determine how much of that time the visitor actually spent viewing the site.
This is an advanced feature.
If visitors request your site directly without following a link from another
site, this information is not available, and is labelled in the stats as,
'Direct Access (not referred)'.
This section displays the top referers to your site. The number in the
coloured square of the legend is the total number of referals over the date
range from a given source. A detailed listing of all referers, not just the top
few, can be displayed by clicking the 'List All' link at the bottom of the
legend.
This is an advanced feature.
The number in the coloured square of the legend is the total number of
accesses over the date range by a given user. A detailed listing of all
referers, not just the top few, can be displayed by clicking the 'List All'
link at the bottom of the legend.
This is an advanced feature.
Top n Sources of Visitors per Day
Each time a visitor comes to the site, their origin is given to the server as
a unique address called an 'IP Address', and is made up four numbers of the
form '123.123.123.123'. The server then attempts to look up the name given to
the IP address. If successful, it may give the company for which they work, or
more commonly is their ISP (Internet Service Provider). If not successful
(owing to poorly configured networks or an intentional hiding of the name),
only the address can be stored.
Visits from Top n Countries per Day
For each visit to the site, if the source of the visit can be determined (see
above), the country of origin may often be guessed from the name. For example,
names ending in '.au' are almost definitely visitors from Australia. Other
names, such as those ending in '.com', can be taken by companies from all over
the world, and are best identified as 'International'. If the name of the
source of the visit cannot be determined, it is shown as 'Unknown'.
Advanced Statistics
Average Visitors per Day of Week
The two graphs in this section divide the stats into 7-day elements and display
the averaged number of visitors across the date range for each day of the week.
This may help to identify the nature of visitors - whether domestic or
corporate, and also to correlate responses to marketing exercises.
Average Number of Viewed Pages per Visit per Day
This section plots the actual usage rate of the site by identifying the average
number of pages viewed per visit. This demonstrates whether visitors are
glancing at a page or two of the site, or exploring around further, and hence
identifies whether the most appropriate visitor is being invited to the site.
The change in this value over time paints a good picture of repeat versus new
visits (repeat visitors typically view fewer pages), and if examined together
with Web site altertions, illustrates the effectiveness of the alterations.
Average Visit Duration (in minutes)
The visit duration is a good indicator of Web site interest, and when examined
in conjunction with the number of pages viewed, helps to explain visitor
patterns. Two graphs are given - the duration of a visit to a Web site and the
duration of display of Web pages, both averaged for each day over the date
range.
Top n Referers per Day
Referers are Web pages which link to your site. When a visitor clicks
on a line on one of these pages and is directed to your site, this information
is carried through. It is very useful to know where traffic to your site is
coming from, as it identifies the success of search engines, referral partners
and cross-promotions.
Top n Users per Day
Web pages that are password protected are able to store the login information
for each visitor as they log in. If you have password protected areas on the
Web site that visitors have used, this section will automatically appear in
the list. The graph shows the number of visits, hence the amount of activity,
that the top users perform over the selected date range.