Comments on: How to measure your online success

By: Shack’s Comings and Goings » Sunday Wash-Up

Shack’s Comings and Goings » Sunday Wash-Up — Sat, 20 Jun 2009 21:46:02 +0000

[...] How to measure your online success April K. Hamilton Guest posts on Maria Schneiders blog, “So, you’ve got your author website up, you’re blogging regularly, and maybe you’re even doing some guest blogging on others’ sites. But how do you know if it’s working?” [...]

By: Deborah

Deborah — Mon, 11 May 2009 17:23:09 +0000

Good info. I also signed up for Google Alerts with my blog name and blog link, so that I know who links to my blog.

By: Tumblemoose

Tumblemoose — Mon, 11 May 2009 16:56:25 +0000

Hi April,

Thanks for the great explanations of the terminology and the advice regarding these metrics. I go through phases where I’ll check frequently and then I won’t check for a while. I do need to become more consistent I think.

Thanks for the def of “hits” I never really understood what that meant – now, I am an enlightened individual. :-)

Cheers

George

By: April L. Hamilton

April L. Hamilton — Sat, 09 May 2009 06:01:10 +0000

Jon –
Google Analytics offers more options and finer detail in its stats, but it’s also less user-friendly. But even though I’m a retired web developer and know how to interpret all the various lists and graphs offered by GA, in practice I find that I just don’t want to bother with that level of detail most of the time. I want to see unique visitors, came from, popular pages, search engine results, and overall traffic trends, but that’s about it. Those things are all accessible with fewer mouseclicks on StatCounter, so that’s my go-to stats program for my blog and author website.

However, Publetariat has Webalizer and AWS Stats built into the administrator control panel, and I like those programs as well. I find AWS gives more and better ‘came from’ information, and Webalizer is great for tracking overall traffic trends and drilling down to specific visitor IP addresses. I suppose that like most things, it’s a matter of what your specific needs and priorities are.

By: J. M. Strother

J. M. Strother — Sat, 09 May 2009 03:08:17 +0000

Great advice, April. I was already doing most of that but appreciate the new links to Who’s Talking and StatCounter. I use Google Analytics. Do you think it’s pretty much six of one and half-dozen of the other when it comes to GA vs SC, or do you see some advantages of one over the other?

Being a map geek myself, I like the GA map overlay, but more for general interest than for any meaningful analysis.

It also pays to check out your website with different browsers, just to make sure there isn’t any weirdness going on for some of your visitors.
~jon

By: Stephen Book

Stephen Book — Fri, 08 May 2009 14:27:07 +0000

Good information, Maria. Thank you for sharing.

By: anna

anna — Thu, 07 May 2009 14:08:21 +0000

that was a great post. though it’s probably good i’m not completely awake yet as that trip down “who’s talkin” was interesting, to say the least…

love this blog, it’s always so very informative.

By: ana

ana — Thu, 07 May 2009 13:55:39 +0000

Great article, very insightful and informative. Thank you!