[WEB4LIB] website stats analysis

[David King]

> I can't, however, see the value in the numbers for "page views,"
> "visits," and "hits," mostly because there is no way to eliminate 
> staff and public computers. And anyway, what is a "visit?" 
> WebTrends says it's all activity for one user.  So when "average 
> visits per day" is 300, what does that mean??? 

Average visits isn't too useful, unless you're seeing if web use is
going up or down. The useful part of visits/page views is to find the
10-25 most popular pages on your website. We report that type of
statistic every month. It helps us see what's being used, what people
want more of, and what we want to see used (but isn't being used).

The big total page views/visits per month is something else we report. 

Some web stats software also show what keywords search engines used to
find your site - that can be useful, too.

> "there is no way to eliminate staff and public computers"

Yes, there is - in the admin side of the product (well, Live Stats and
SmarterStats both do this anyway. WebTrends should, too). You do it by
IP address - basically you have to tell it to not look at certain IPs or
ranges of IPs.

David King
Kansas City Public Library
816-701-3400, ext. 2503
davidking at kclibrary.org