Tryangled Solutions web designing tips tricks

So you’ve started a website and now have an abundance of traffic coming in. That’s great! But where are these people coming from? How are they finding your site? And most importantly, how are they behaving when they’re on your site? This is where the importance of web analytics comes into play.

Web analytics is the study of how your site’s visitors behave. This includes the tracking of important statistics such as unique vistis, pageviews, bounce rates and conversion rates. For many small sites, the last two statistics are not as important, but for large sites or online businesses, the last two play a key roll in optimizing your site’s performance.

There are two main web analytics technologies: server logfile analysis and page tagging.

Server logfile analysis involves the reading of log files on a server in order to collect analytics data. During the early days of the Internet, server logfile analysis only tracked the number of requests made by a visitor to the web server. This was commonly know as a “hit” and was logical since many sites only consisted of a single HTML file at the time. As more elements were added to web pages (images, multiple pages, etc.), server logfile analysis became impractical, as it would count every server request on one page as a “hit”.

These complications led to the creation of new web analytic metrics: pageviews and visits. A pageview was defined as a request to the web server for a single page while a visit was defined as a series of requests from a single person that ended after a certain time frame. Eventually, cookies were used to track unique user sessions due to the evolution of proxy and dynamic IP technologies, which made the old “visit” statistic fairly useless.

Some of the most popular software programs for tracking web analytics use the server logfile analysis method. These include Webalizer, Urchin, WebTrends and the open-source AWStats.

Page tagging involves the placement of code on a page in order to track analytics data. The earliest form of page tagging was the website counter. These visible, numeric counters eventually evolved into invisible snippets of JavaScript. The small JavaScript code would be placed on a page and send data back to an analytics program or company for analysis. Just like the server logfile analysis method, page tagging also involves assigning cookies to each user in order to determine unique visitors.

One of the most popular page tagging analytics programs is Google Analytics. The service is free to anyone with a Google account and is the standard in web analytics for any person or company on a tight budget.

So why should you worry about web analytics? So you can increase the performance of your website of course!

Why do people leave your site? A “bounce” is when a visitor leaves your website after only viewing one page. Many analytics programs have a statistic called bounce rate, which measures the percentage of people that commit a “bounce”. This metric allows you to see which pages on your site are performing poorly and then make improvements or adjustments to that page. This statistic is extremely important for e-commerce sites or sites that would like a visitor to commit a certain action.

How much time do people spend on your site? This is known as session duration and is important to know because it allows you to see what pages on your site have content that is compelling your visitors to stay. It will also let you know what pages need additional content added in order for visitors to stay on them longer.

The history of your website and in fact, the individual pages within it are playing an increasingly important role in your site’s ability to rank well. The longer your site has been online the better your chances of ranking highly. Further, the longer a specific internal page has been live the better it will rank for additional phrases.

What this means to you is that you will have to take into account the length of time your domain has been around when you set your expectations regarding which phrases you should be ranking for. In the beginning of a promotion you will not want to target an intensely competitive phrase with hopes of attaining it on Google; rather you will want to select less competitive secondary phrases that contain the primary phrase (”seo services” vs. “guaranteed seo services” for example) and optimize for that. What you will accomplish is rankings on Google for at least a relevant phrase while at the same time building links with relevancy for your primary phrase which you will rank well for once your website has gained history.

The less competitive the phrase, the more weight the other factors will have on your ability to rank highly. History is only one factor among many. For highly competitive phrases where you are competing with sites that have history and have also addressed the other factors noted below you will find it extremely difficult to outrank them, however for less competitive phrases the other factors will hold more weight in that the other sites will likely not be optimized as strongly for them and thus, your site stands a much better chance of beating them out.

You have decided that a dedicated server offers the best features for your online presence. There is no need to share resources and you can set up the server as you please. There remains just one question: Are you going to rent or buy your server? Dedicated hosting means that you are renting a server from a web host. But you also have the option of buying your own server and having the host provide the facilities to house it and connect it to the Internet. This service is called colocated hosting.

The advantages of colocating include all the advantages of dedicated hosting – you have the resources of the entire server and bandwidth to do with as you please. The additional benefit over dedicated hosting is the lower cost. Because you own the server, your monthly fees don’t include charges for hardware maintenance and upkeep. On the other hand, your initial outlay will be larger because you have to buy the server. If the server is good quality and remains in service for a reasonable length of time, however, your overall costs will be lower with colocation.

The cost of colocation depends on the amount of space your server occupies. Data centers house servers in racks that in turn are housed in cabinets. Cabinets are usually 40 rack units in height, with each rack unit equal to 1.75′. The cases of server computers are measured in rack heights – 1U = 1.75′. Typical sizes for servers are 1U, 2U and 4U, so the physical size of your server will determine how much the colocation host will charge per month. Bandwidth is another factor affecting price.

There are several options available when purchasing a server and getting it to the colocation data center. If you live in close proximity to the data center you could buy a server locally and set it up at your own premises. Once it is setup you can personally deliver it to the data center. Another option is to buy the server from a mail order retailer and have them deliver it directly to the data center. This is a good option if you are not located near the data center. It saves you the cost of shipping the server and the retailer will be responsible if the server happens to be damaged in transit.  The disadvantage is that you have to set up the server remotely through a web interface. The third option is to buy the server direct from the host. Not all hosts are in the business of selling servers, but those that do may offer financing and setup assistance.
Colocation or Dedicated?

Colocation puts you in charge of the hardware, but that also means that you are responsible in the case of hardware failure. If you have signed up for dedicated hosting you are renting the server, so the host will replace hard drives or CPUs if they malfunction. The initial costs of colocation are much higher than dedicated hosting. You have to buy the server as well as insurance and software licences. All that is included in a dedicated hosting plan. Hardware upgrades are also more expensive with colocation because you have to buy the new equipment outright and pay to have it installed. Dedicated hosting plans usually allow you to upgrade either hardware or bandwidth at a reasonable cost.

The main advantage of colocation is the lower monthly costs when compared with dedicated hosting plans. Other advantages include greater control over network configuration and more flexibility. A colocation provider has to be chosen carefully. After all, they will host both your hardware and your data. Consider such details as security, network redundancy, protection from fire and earthquakes, and backup generators in the case of power outages.