Reader Favorites
Other Statistics and Conclusion
So what other things can we find out about our users? If we look through our stats we can find out what browsers and operating systems that people are using when visiting your site. Now you should be writing code that will work accross all browsers and operating systems so these statistics tend to be a little annecdotal. However knowing this infomation tells you more about your visitors, and as we've mentioned before, information on your visitors is invaluable. These statistics are not something you're likely to watch very closely on a day to day basis, but when a situation arises where you need these stats (and that situation will happen eventually) you will be well equipped to answer some of the questions you may have.
To summarize we've found that our log analyzer can provide us with the following information:
- Broad traffic trends accross the site
- The pages through which people are entering and leaving your site
- What pages are your most popular/unpopular
- How are people getting to your site
- What are your users using to view your site
But more importantly, we've begun to explore why this data is important. It's not always clear upfront why some of this data is important, but the more data you have, the more data you'll use. The more data you use, the more informed decisions you can make. I try not to make too many guarantees when it comes to topics like this since so much is subjective, but one thins I can guarantee is that once you start paying closer attention to your logs, you'll wonder how you ever got by before. I know I do.