Website logs are a treasure of information you can gather from the visitors of your website. Unfortunately such valuable information is ignored by many webmasters either due to laziness or to ignorance! Successful websites are not just a strike of luck or a blain good idea. A good website is a site that caters for the needs of its visitors and also a good website is a site that attracts the kind of visitors it seeks.

If you do not have a website log or you do have it but do not analyze it, then you are driving your site in darkness!

If you need professional assistance with website statistical analysis at a very affordable price! Do not hesitate to contact me.  Said Samir

here is some additional expert opinion

So what is in the website log?

There is a record for each webpage viewed, including the web page address, time stamp, visitor's IP, operating system, browser, and usually the address of the previous page he came from (called the referrer).

From this data it is possible to generate information on which search engines / other websites are providing you with visitors and even more, you can know which keywords drove your visitors to your site!

• which search engines/other websites are providing you with visitors
• which words and phrases people are using on the search engines to find your site.
• statistics for each page including how long each page was viewed
• top entry pages for the site
• top exit pages for the site
• the most popular navigation routes through the site
• ... and much much more.

There are several software applications available to process log data ranging from free products to several-hundred-dollars  products such as Web trends.

You can find software that provides comprehensive reports on every conceivable aspect of website usage at a very affordable price as well.

You might say this is all very interesting but how is going to help my business?

The answer is that you can measure the success of your website in the following areas:

• Visibility - how are people finding your site?
• Navigability - are people finding their way from one page to another?
• Usability - is it easy to use?

Importance of referrer information

From the referrer information it is possible to determine how many visitors each search engine is providing you with, usually along with the search criteria as well.

If you are not getting visitors from the main search engines then there may be something wrong with the visible text on your web pages not containing the words people typically search on for a site of your type. Alternatively, the special "meta-tag" keywords and descriptions in the page header may not be set-up or typical search word/phrases. The person who manages your site should be able to help with the meta-tags.
Links from other sites can also be monitored from the referrer information.
Also the absence of referrer information usually means someone has either typed the web page address directly, having seen it in printed marketing material, or has book marked the site from a previous visit.

Track changes of visitors' habits

If visitors are finding you but not getting to the sales/enquiry page you can use the logs to spot this initially, then monitor any changes you subsequently make to make the site easier to navigate or make the copy more compelling.

As with many statistics, web server logs need to be taken with a pinch of salt, and not be taken down to the last 0.1 %, because for various techie reasons they can under or over register visitor activity.

Measure growth

Finally it is worth building a spreadsheet where you can store a summary of your web visitor statistics together with subscribtions in your Newsletter to keep track of trends. Most businesses carefully monitor the effectiveness of their printed marketing material. It is just as important to do the same with your website if it is to realize its full potential.

With best wishes for good webmastering