Yesterday's posting looked at the terminology and accuracy (or lack of) of some of the server log analysis applications. Today's posting, the last in the series, looks at what you can actually do with the information you gain, and how you can use it to save money and even generate new sales.(1) Track advertising.
Without analysing your server logs, you are more or less blind as to how effective any advertising campaign may or may not be.
Example. You may be able to log into your Google AdWords account to see how many clicks each of the keywords and ads are generating, but that is only half the story.
Some of your keywords and ads may generate a large number of clicks, and you may be quite happy to spend a lot of money on them. But would you be quite so eager if you found out that all those visitors are spending around 3 seconds before leaving your site?
Measuring the clicks alone isn't enough. You have to know what the visitors are doing once they arrive. In order to do so, you need tracking and log analysis.
Without it, you're probably throwing money away.
(2) Monitor search engine traffic.
It's a good idea to keep an eye on how much traffic you're getting from the search engines, and, for example, to make sure that your Google traffic doesn't suddenly plummet. If it does, you'll want to know about before it starts showing up in your sales figures.
You can also use your logs to see which of your keywords are more profitable. I guarantee they're not all equal.
This information might also give you some good ideas for landing pages.
(3) Trends.
Every online business has traffic trends, and these are usually more complex than the basic 7 day pattern.
Use your logs to spot the quiet times, the busy times and the opportunities.
(4) Cracks and Hacks.
If you're selling software online, these are unfortunately a part of life, and many software developers choose to ignore them.
But some of the crack sites are capable of generating a staggering amount of traffic. Ignoring them is one thing, but you don't want to let a small number of sites slow down your server and affect your site's performance.
Without your server log files, you won't know about it until it's too late. If ever.
(5) Identify your gold referrers.
You might well be surprised by who's sending you traffic. You'd expect to see the search engines, directories and some of the larger software sites. But you might also find that a fairly inconspicuous link on an unknown sites (or sites) is sending you a lot of traffic.
If so, then take a look. Perhaps you might be able to further develop the relationship or even advertise on the site?
(6) Know thy browsers.
The old browser war was between Internet Explorer and Netscape, and we all know who won.
But there's a new browser war going on, and one of the new contenders is becoming extremely popular.
Have you had a look at your website through Mozilla? Does it look the same? It probably doesn't, and there may even be a few unpleasant surprises awaiting you.
But you'll never know how much of an issue it is until you look at what browsers your visitors are using.
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Your server logs are a gold mine of phenomenally useful and important information. Ignore them at your peril.
