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Sunshine

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Do you track your site hits? how do you know when the number of people viewing your site is 'good'? and are 'new' visitors better than return visitors? just a few questions running through my mind.
 
I don't have a way at the moment to check my site stats. It would be nice tho to see sometimes. The only stats I get are from the B&B association and webervations.
Maybe swirt can tell you more about this?
 
I don't have a way at the moment to check my site stats. It would be nice tho to see sometimes. The only stats I get are from the B&B association and webervations.
Maybe swirt can tell you more about this?.
Google has a free one - the how to is on their main page.
Jeremy Robinson, a former innkeeper who now hosts websites has a software called Superstatz that a lot of innkeepers use that tells you everything. His website is http://www.ew3d.com/services.htm
I hope to get it soon myself.
Riki
 
I don't have a way at the moment to check my site stats. It would be nice tho to see sometimes. The only stats I get are from the B&B association and webervations.
Maybe swirt can tell you more about this?.
Just go to Google Analytics and sign up for it. You then post the code to your site. You will get more stats than you can shake a stick at!!!!
 
Here is the clincher. You can have tons of visitors to your website, many from overseas - Asia in particular that are computers trolling for email adresses to spam you. They are not looking at staying with you, they are junk.
The most important information imo is:
Referrals
Where are your referrals coming from?
If you are on BBonline.com and ILOVEINNS.COM and one is sending 50 click thrus to your website every month or week and the other is sending two - then that gives you an idea (for your marketing dollars) who to renew and who is the best bang for your buck.
In marketing your B&B this is very important. Who is sending the guests your way?
You have to SPEND money to make money. People will not knock your door down if they do not know you exist. Locally is great, but remember the majority of your guests will be from out of the area, that is who you target. People are not tourists in their own towns.
You need to be found on the directories. Having a nice website of your own is not enough. It is IMPERATIVE, and you want all visitors to be ON YOUR WEBSITE, to book a room from YOUR website.
Visualize the web as a SPIDERS WEB. You are the center of the web - you are the spider, and all the other parts of the web LEAD to you. You cannot be a web with just a spider sitting in the center (your website), you NEED those other carefully woven outside sections (links) to ALL lead to you.
and another analogy would be cast a broader net to catch more fish. The inter-net is the same. One small website (on the net) may not be enough. Cast a broader net, be on the directories that guests are visiting.
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Hits are basically meaningless. one page can have 50 hits on it at once because EVERYTHING on the page is counted as one hit. Each photo, is a hit etc..so I usually tell people to look at the number of UNIQUE visitors to their site and then as Junie pointed out..the REFERRERS...That is what you want to know...how are people finding your web site. If you are paying for directory listings or PPC, then you need to know which ones are working for you and which are not.
Go here to see what Swit says about trackers
 
I have a cheapo called www-web-stat.com and for $5 per month I get all the info I can digest (I am not a computer whiz like some on this Blorum). I also have Google Analytics. This tells me are they first time or repeat and when they were here last (2nd, 3th, 4th, etc and how many days or hours since last visit). Also tells me (usually) the city & state/country but the 2 most important to me are referrer and keywords searched on - and I can click to see where I placed in this search.
 
I have a cheapo called www-web-stat.com and for $5 per month I get all the info I can digest (I am not a computer whiz like some on this Blorum). I also have Google Analytics. This tells me are they first time or repeat and when they were here last (2nd, 3th, 4th, etc and how many days or hours since last visit). Also tells me (usually) the city & state/country but the 2 most important to me are referrer and keywords searched on - and I can click to see where I placed in this search..
How do your metrics compare between web-stat and Google? I am always curious to see if the numbers match-up well. Google does a really good job at filtering out "bad" traffic like the Chinese-isp-bots... curious if others keep up with them.
 
Google Analytics - it's free and like a couple others said, it has more info than you have time to look at!
whatchutalkingabout_smile.gif
 
Our web designer put us on cPanel X - it has a lot of stats - I'm learning what they mean.
 
I have a cheapo called www-web-stat.com and for $5 per month I get all the info I can digest (I am not a computer whiz like some on this Blorum). I also have Google Analytics. This tells me are they first time or repeat and when they were here last (2nd, 3th, 4th, etc and how many days or hours since last visit). Also tells me (usually) the city & state/country but the 2 most important to me are referrer and keywords searched on - and I can click to see where I placed in this search..
How do your metrics compare between web-stat and Google? I am always curious to see if the numbers match-up well. Google does a really good job at filtering out "bad" traffic like the Chinese-isp-bots... curious if others keep up with them.
.
It probably would not hurt if I knew a bit more about what I am looking at, however, Analyitics is giving me a 30 day referrer list and Web Stat is giving me calendar month. Taking that into consideration, I think Web Stat is pretty close. It shows views not hits. I can also look ar how many views per month since I started using them, what day of the week gets the most traffic, the hour of the day, etc. I could get more info as in click path & page vie and uptime & connect time if I would pay a bit more.
I guess I like it because I am used to it and it is easy to read. Google is almost info overload for a techie ignoramus such as me.
 
I use extremetracking.com. I think it was El or another on the forum who recommended them. I've probably had them about 4 years. They have a free and a paid tracker. Maybe I don't need them anymore with google analytics, etc. , but I've become used to them.
 
I have a cheapo called www-web-stat.com and for $5 per month I get all the info I can digest (I am not a computer whiz like some on this Blorum). I also have Google Analytics. This tells me are they first time or repeat and when they were here last (2nd, 3th, 4th, etc and how many days or hours since last visit). Also tells me (usually) the city & state/country but the 2 most important to me are referrer and keywords searched on - and I can click to see where I placed in this search..
How do your metrics compare between web-stat and Google? I am always curious to see if the numbers match-up well. Google does a really good job at filtering out "bad" traffic like the Chinese-isp-bots... curious if others keep up with them.
.
It probably would not hurt if I knew a bit more about what I am looking at, however, Analyitics is giving me a 30 day referrer list and Web Stat is giving me calendar month. Taking that into consideration, I think Web Stat is pretty close. It shows views not hits. I can also look ar how many views per month since I started using them, what day of the week gets the most traffic, the hour of the day, etc. I could get more info as in click path & page vie and uptime & connect time if I would pay a bit more.
I guess I like it because I am used to it and it is easy to read. Google is almost info overload for a techie ignoramus such as me.
.
You can change the parameters in Google analytics to 31 days so that it would show all of July. You can change the range to whatever you want actually.
 
I use extremetracking.com. I think it was El or another on the forum who recommended them. I've probably had them about 4 years. They have a free and a paid tracker. Maybe I don't need them anymore with google analytics, etc. , but I've become used to them..
Yeah with google analytics, the extreme tracker pales in comparison. I never use it anymore. Though folks I know with the paid version really get alot of info. Many of my clients here locally use AWstats which the web hosting company provides. It still is not as comprehensive as Google Analytics though,.
 
As others have already commented on, Google Analytics (http://www.google.com/analytics/) is a good free option. On most sites it is all I use. There are some paid versions out there (specifically the ones that are aimed at B&B's can be of a bit more help with mroe specific tracking) but to be honest I'd usually recommend putting the money you'd spend on them into another quality directory listing.
A bit of time setting up goals properly in Analytics can be pretty helpful.
 
Thanks everyone for your input. I was asking these questions (unique visitors vs repeat visitors, etc) because we do have a site tracker with our website and we are able to track our visitors and see who is a repeat and who is new.
It seems to me that the repeat folks maybe more interested in booking a room if they keep coming back to your site. But then again I don't really know.
We had 328 visits to our site in July (with 62 being repeat visits) and 262 visits so far this month. with 15 repeats). With being on the web for four months I don't think that is too bad, but how do you measure that? I tried to ask a local gal today what her visits are each month because she has been doing this for several years and her response was "oh I don't know, I don't keep track of that stuff."
I know it depends on your town where you live etc so that is why I tried to ask someone who is in the biz.
 
I forgot to add that most of our visits are from the Katy Trail web site. We are a half block from the trail so we are listed on their site. Google is our next big one, then our city web site and chamber website.
we are able to see exactly what folks typed in that led them to us. this is very helpful. But it doesn't answer my question about repeat visits vs new or unique visits. I guess I might have just answered my own question.... .if most of my hits are coming from good sites ie the Katy Trail and google etc... then new/unique visits are better right?
 
As others have already commented on, Google Analytics (http://www.google.com/analytics/) is a good free option. On most sites it is all I use. There are some paid versions out there (specifically the ones that are aimed at B&B's can be of a bit more help with mroe specific tracking) but to be honest I'd usually recommend putting the money you'd spend on them into another quality directory listing.
A bit of time setting up goals properly in Analytics can be pretty helpful..
But one must have a clue as to what they are doing to do that. Filters? Goals? DUH!!!!! I could not even figure out how to set it to 31 days.
 
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