Many people out there believe counters are not important; that they are merely display a so called count of people who have visited your site. In some ways this is true. Just like you can start your checking account checks at a certain number, you can manipulate your starting count for your page counters.
If you choose to use counters on your website, they do provide you with information about how popular your pages are by indicating how many people have been there. Unfortunately, that’s about all they can tell you. To get more information, you’ll need to have a package such as Webtrends installed on your website. If this is a free feature of your Web Host, you’re in luck. You may have the capability to tell how your visitors linked to your web page, as well as many of the characteristics of the user. You may also have an indication of how long the visitor was there.
If your web host doesn't provide WebTrends, prepare for sticker shock as you start to look around for a copy to purchase. Before you spend the big bucks, see if your web host has an add-on WebTrends package that is reasonably priced. While an add-on package may not have all the capabilities of a personally owned copy, it's better than just using counters. All in all, WebTrends is definitely the way to go if it's free, a reasonably priced add-on or you can afford the cost of having it installed.
If you decide you would like to have a counter on each page, consider using Muquit’s Webpage Counter (WWW Homepage Access Counter and Clock). It’s absolutely FREE and is the most flexible and configurable counter out there. It has been used by literally thousands since it was first written by this engineering student in the mid 90’s. There is complete documentation available as well. Unlike some counters, the counter is smart enough to only count unique visitors (i.e. if you visit a page 100 times, it will only count you once). The feature I like best is that you can install an invisible counter on each page, and then have a single page you can access that references each pages counter with visibility turned on. That way you can go to a single page, anytime, and from anywhere (without special login, unless you set up the web directory to require it) and see what your hit counts are for your whole site. It’s kind of like a mini-WebTrends.
If you have a rather large site, such as the Scent of Success site, you can easily tell if people are getting to a certain point and then not moving on. It can help you to make decisions as to whether or not certain pages might need updating to increase user interest.
If you decide to make the counter visible on your web pages, there are literally hundreds of FREE number styles available from Digit Mania. Check it out. It’s worth consideration, and it’s FREE!
Here’s a list of the features of this counter:
The only drawback for this counter is that you HAVE TO read the documentation. With the number of features and options available, setup may be a little difficult for the novice, however, the benefits far out weigh the struggles you may encounter. Once it is completed, you can basically use the same format and insert a different counter file ID for the specific page.
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