3rd March 2008 - Site Statistics for Your EASYsite
Site statistics are information about how many people have visited your website. This information can include details about how many pages each person viewed on your site, where in the world they were when they viewed your site, their IP address, how long they stayed on your site and how they found your website. Many different software packages exist for tracking visitors to a website. For your EASYsite you can choose between two free site statistics packages: SiteMeter and Google Analytics. 
Sitemeter Basic is a free site statistics tool. There is the option of purchasing an upgrade to SiteMeter premium but the basic tool tells you a good deal about your site visitors so there is no need to pay for the premium tool. To avail of the basic sitemeter service you have to display the sitemeter logo or name at the bottom of each page on your website. However this is very discrete and most people don't even notice it.
With SiteMeter you also have the option of displaying your site visitor numbers at the bottom of each page on your site so people can see how popular your site is. You can make your statistics private if you want, so only you can view your site stats. You login to your sitemeter account with a username and password to view your site stats, the sitemeter logo will still remain on your website even if you choose to make your stats private. You can also opt to recieve your site stats by email once a week.
Google Analytics is another free site statistics tool. For commercial sites, web developers may charge for setting up Google Analytics on a website but for an EASYsite this service is free of charge. With Google Analytics, you do not have to display the Google logo on your site for using this tool but neither is there the option to show your visitor numbers at the bottom of your site as there is with SiteMeter. Just as with SiteMeter, you login to your Google Analytics account to view your site stats and can recieve weekly emails updating you on your site stats for the previous week.
With both site statistics tools, code has to be copied into the templates that make up your EasySite in order for the tool to track visitors to your site. This is quick and easy to do but you should contact your EASYsite administrator about this as they have access to your EASYsite templates. We will also set you up a SiteMeter account or Google Account so you can login to view your site stats at any time. Once the stats tool is set up for your site, you can track visitors to your site but neither tool can give you information about visitors to your site before the tool was set up on your website.
For more information about Google Analytics go to www.google.com/analytics. For more information about SiteMeter go to www.sitemeter.com . To request that one of these tools be set up on your EASYsite email community@kildare.ie.