Your Most Important Online Business DecisionYour web business depends on your site's uptime around the clock. When you want to make a purchase online, you most likely take the time to check the credentials of that business. Yet, how many of you actually bother to check out the credentials and competency of a web host, which is absolutely the stronghold of your web business?
I've been in the hosting industry as a reseller for almost 5 years. It's become a zoo out there. With so many hosts coming and going, or sites constantly going down or getting cracked into from lack of security measures (very common), how can you really know for sure if you're going with a reliable and competent host?
Emailing to test their support response is NOT a good indicator of their response time. Some will be very fast for pre-sales questions, but extremely slow or non-responsive for support once you are a customer. On the other hand, sometimes very slow for pre-sales and fast for customer support.
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How to Analyze Your Web Site Traffic (Part 3)
Herman Drost
How to Analyze Your Web Site Traffic (Part 3 of a 3 Part Series) Copyright 2002 by Herman DrostIn Part 2 of this series, we discussed some of the ways to track your web site visitors. Now we will take a look at:
4. Web Traffic Analysis Software These are programs that analyze your server logs and then create traffic reports accordingly. The quality of the reports generated will depend on what software you actually use. Some log analyzers are free and come preinstalled on many hosting accounts, while others can cost a good deal of money.
Examples: Webalizer (http://www.webalizer.com) WebTrends (http://www.webtrends.com)
Webalizer (free) The Webalizer is a fast, FREE, web server log file analysis program which produces usage statistics in HTML format for viewing with a standard web browser. The results are presented in both columnar and graphical format, which facilitates interpretation. Yearly, monthly, daily and hourly usage statistics are presented, along with the ability to display usage by site, URL, referrer, user agent (browser), search string, entry/exit page, username and country.
Here's an example of the Web Usage Statistics: http://www.webalizer.com/sample/index.html
WebTrends ($495) The Web Trends Analyzer produces essential reports on web site visitor patterns, referring sites, visitor paths and demographics. You can learn, for example, which sites and keyword searches have referred the largest number of visitors to your site.
It presents data, detailed and in-depth, in an organized and concise tabular format with full-color graphs.
This Log Analyzer is priced at $495 and is licensed for a single web server hosting content with a maximum of 50 domains.
Here's a sample of the web usage statistics: http://download.netiq.com/Library/SampleReports/ WAS_LA_Complete/complete.HTM
Conclusion: Web traffic statistics provide very valuable information about your web site. You can make better marketing decisions through them telling you:
Which Web pages are most popular and which are least used. Who is visiting your Web site. Which Web browsers to optimize your Web pages for. Which Web search engines are most useful to you, and which are the least useful. Where errors or bad links may be occurring in your Web pages.
By analyzing your web traffic, you can determine what marketing strategies are successful. You can then change them as necessary, to boost the sales or services from your site.
Herman Drost is a Certified Web Site Designer (CIW), owner and author of iSiteBuild.com Affordable Hosting, Site Design and Promotion Packages http://www.isitebuild.comSubscribe to his "Marketing Tips" newsletter for more original articles. mailto:subscribe@isitebuild.com. Read more of his in-depth articles at: www.isitebuild.com/articles
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Your web host could be the reason why you are a sitting duck for a DDos attackJust as we have been forced to face terrifying new terrorist attacks in the offline world that threatens our very way of life, online and less publicized dangers are an increasing and terrifying threat.
Few people realize that your choice of web host has a lot to do with just how secure your web site is going to be against attack. Even a simple assault from a lone hacker will tend to be easier with an unprepared web host with less resources and experience.
But the real terror emerges from Ddos attacks or Distributed Denial-of-service attacks. Deliberately designed to elude detection by today's most popular tools, these attacks tend to be swift and come without any warning, leaving behind huge losses that can never be recouped. Microsoft lost an estimated $500 million in just a few days from a Ddos attack on the site in January 2001. Of course the costs go way beyond simple monetary terms. Because site performance is compromised, the business ends up with frustrated customers.
The network infrastructure of the host you choose is very important if a web master is to ensure that their site is protected. And yet most of this protection does not come cheap. For example the most recent Cisco Ddos protection appliance costs about $200,000. Without this protection the host and his entire network are "sitting ducks" as any Ddos attack on any single site will affect the entire network and thus other web sites as well.
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