How To Interpret AWStats Website Statistics Data
Use AWStats Statistics To Improve Your Website And Keep It Visitor Friendly
In this section I am going to explain some of the main statistics found in the AWStats CPanel control panel and how you can use them to improve your website. As a website owner (also known as a webmaster) you should get into the habit of looking at your monthly AWStats website statistics in order to make changes to you web pages, video downloads, sales letters and so on. AWStats is not just about numbers and other data, it is about improving on things that are not working for your website.
AWStats is a part of the CPanel control panel, so you will need to Login To Your CPanel before clicking on the AWSTATS link inside the Logs area.
Fig 1.0 Click on the AWSTATS Control Panel to continue
The first thing you will see in AWStats is a summary of your website statistics. The statistics you need to pay attention to are Unique Visitors and Number Of Visits even though in the media they always mention the Hits statistics - I will now give an explanation of those statistics so that you are 100% clear about what it is you are looking at and more importantly which statistic to monitor.
Fig 1.1 A summary of statistics - Are HITS better than Number Of Visits?
Unique Visitors
Unique Visitors is the number of visits made to your website by a single device, and more precisely by a single IP Address, such as one computer, one mobile phone, one ipad and so on. Do not be mislead by this statistic though, in terms of a single device, because some devices such as a Dial-Up Modem get a new ip address each time the user logs on; in this case each time they restart their device and connect to your website. This means the same device could be connecting to your website each day, via a website browser for example, but is registered as a Unique Visitor purely because it has a new ip address each day.
Number Of Visits
Number Of Visits is the overall number of visits made to your website, excluding those visits made by the search engines such as Google and Yahoo.
Number of visits works in combination with Unique Visitors. For example. If someone visits your website ten times, in one session or over a period of one
month, their device (i.e. computer) will be marked as 1 Unique Visit and 10 Number Of Visits.
This statistic is the one you should be monitoring as it is a good indicator of how popular, and unpopular, you website is becoming over time.
Pages
Pages is the overall number of web pages that have been viewed by your visitors. Web Pages in this context usually implies HTML files
and CGI files but not Image files, JavaScript files or CSS files for example.
Take this statistic as useless! because it is not accurate enough to say for example "These statistics are only for html pages/files". If page statistics
were purely for html pages/files that would be different.
Hits
Hits is the overall number of files requested for download. For example. If you have one web page (i.e. one html file) with one image displayed on
it, that will class as two files requested for download (1 html file and 1 image file). However, if your web page (html) file is requesting an external
file, such as a javascript file or css file, that external file will be classed as one additional file; therefore making three files (three Hits).
Hits statistics are only really useful, and ideal, for one-item web page websites such as web pages that only contain text or video. That way you would
know that 1,000 hits for example would mean 1,000 video views or 1,000 text page views. Hence why you should dismiss people who state "My website has 1
Million hits" because they might not be aware that those statistics include the website's image files, videos files, html files and so on. And those 1
Million hits would probably be over a period of a few months.
Saying this; 1 Million hits over 1 year would still be a great number but you would need plenty of website files to make those kind of numbers or one
great video!
Bandwidth
Bandwidth is the total number of Bytes downloaded from your website. For example. If you have one web page (html) file that is 10,000 bytes in
total and one image file that is 20,000 bytes in total, each visitor who views (downloads into their web browser) that web page with an image on it is
going to use up 30,000 bytes of your bandwidth allowance.
Bandwidth is another useless statistic in general but can help if you are monitoring it as a total (i.e. when monitoring the difference between a
non-video website and a video website).
Interpreting The Data
Now that you have an idea of what you are looking at in the statistics summary you need to take a closer look at the other statistics available, some of which will be useless to you and some of which will be a great resource.
Hours, Days And Months
Two great statistics, when they are applicable to your website, are the Days and Hours statistics. These can offer a great insight into when someone uses
your website. For example. You might notice that most visitors visit your website on a Friday after 5pm. This is great data if you are running a website
that sells something exclusively on a Weekend but not so good if you run a website that sells something exclusively on a Wednesday. In general though,
with average websites, you will probably find the Days and Hours statistics less useful.
The greatest of time statistics must be the Monthly statistics. This really is a help, especially for forecasting August and December, but requires at
least two years of data to be of real value.
Countries
Another great statistic is the Countries statistic. It is one that can surprise you. Just when you thought your website was popular in one country, because of the mass emails you receive from that country for example, the Countries statistic goes and surprises you by revealing your website is just as popular in two other countries. Watch out though! Some statistics can be misleading.
Fig 1.2 A summary of the COUNTRIES statistics - Click on the FULL LIST link to see the other countries
The above Countries statistics are just a summary of your top 25 countries (the top 25 countries that use your website). To get a better idea of country statistics for your other countries though click on the FULL LIST link.
Fig 1.3 A full list of the other countries that use your website
At first glance the above Countries statistics show the United States as the most popular country but this can be misleading. Statistics from the United States can come from US based search engines such as Google and Yahoo and also from hosts that end in .com or .net. For example. You might get United States countries statistics from companies such as BT and NTL because even though they are based in the UK their domain names end in .com. With search engines crawling/spidering your website on a daily basis will also push up the numbers for United States countries statistics.
Seconds Minutes Hours
Visits Duration (also referred to as Session Duration) represents the amount of time the "average visitor" has spent on your website per visit/session. So in the example below; Out of 6877 visits for the month of September 2010 6330 "average visitors" spent between 0 and 30 seconds on this website whereas 114 "average visitors" spent between 5 and 15 minutes on this website. However, these statistics can be taken with a pinch of salt simply because not all visits can be calculated/added due to the visit not being finished when AWStats collected its data.
Fig 1.4 Can these particular Visits Duration statistics be trusted?
Other reasons why the Visits Duration statistics do not add up is because if you have a Google Analytics account for example its statistics will almost
certainly differ from these AWStats statistics. On top of this, if you do a public survey/questionnaire about your website you will probably find many
visitors have read one of your web pages in detail whereby it has taken them at least 5 minutes to read it for example.
Another thing that can bring these statistics into doubt are your emails. You may be very popular with your emails whereby people have told you "Great
read....I read that web page over and over again". Remember, these statistics deal with "averages", which never truly represent the visitors who have
taken time to read your web pages. So you will never have the answer to "How many people actually read my web pages properly" versus "How many people
glance through my web pages".
Pages URL
Pages-URL represents the pages your visitors, in general, have viewed. It also represents the pages that some of your visitors, in general, have landed on when visiting your website and the pages some of your visitors, in general, have exiting from when leaving your website.
Fig 1.5 What web pages are popular? Which pages have visitors landed on and then exited on?
Entry - In the above example the web page called install_office_2007_vista.htm has been viewed 959 times and out of those 959 views (visits)
899 of them were from visitors who had landed on that web page first. This means they could of found that web page from searching the internet or from a
direct link on a forum for example, but either way they would have landed on (viewed) that web page first. These figures indirectly tell you that the
other 60 views for this web page were made by visitors coming from another web page on this website.
Exit - In contrast to the above; 888 visitors exited this website after viewing the web page called install_office_2007_vista.htm web page,
making it the last web page they viewed. The figures indirectly tell you that the other 71 visitors who viewed this web page went on to view another web
page or two before exiting on one of those other web pages.
The above figures are interesting because they tell you when a particular web page is being landed on, read and then exited from; as opposed to being
landed on, read but not being exited on because visitors go on to view other web pages. The above example is taken from my windows vista computer lessons
website whereby you would expect the above results simply because visitors normally only read the web page that can help them fix their computer problem(s).
They do not normally go on to read the other web pages. This, in part, is the purpose and design of the vista lessons website.
These statistics also tell me, and advertisers via as Google Adsense for example, that the web page called install_office_2007_vista.htm is worth something. Not only that, it also tells me where I am going right and wrong with my website contents. Saying this; Do not take Pages-URL statistics as the gospel. Just because a certain web page is not doing well does not mean it is unsuccessful. With the vista lessons website visitors tend to want to know about different things each month, normally because they are new visitors or repeat visitors learning different sections of the website each month, thereby making different web pages popular each month.
Keywords And Search
Probably one of the most valuable set of statistics of all are the Keywords and Keyphrases statistics. They show you the keywords and keyphrases that have
been used by the search engines to find your website and its web pages. The keywords and keyphrases can be a fascinated insight in terms of finding
keywords and keyphrases that you did not realise would be associated with your website. This could be wording that you do not use or have forgotten about.
For example. You might have a web page titled: How to arrange your photos, but then find a searched term such as How to shuffle your photos.
You may find short keyphrases, long-winded but precise keyphrases, keywords you have not thought about using, keywords or keyphrases that give you ideas
for another project, useless keywords and keyphrases and so on. There is a wealth of information in the keywords and keyphrases sections.
Fig 1.6 What keyphrases have the search engines found in relation to your website and its web pages?
Fig 1.7 What keywords have the search engines found in relation to your website and its web pages?
As the above examples show, your website can be found using hundreds/thousands of keywords and keyphrases which on the downside makes it impossible for you to include all of those keywords and keyphrases in your Google Adwords campaign for example. However, on the upside you would know what keywords and keyphrases to target, in your Google Adwords campaign for example, which could include the less popular keywords and keyphrases.
Conclusion
The above has been a small insight into some of the more popular AWStats statistics, but in general you should take statistics for what they are; insights
only. On top of this, you will find conflicting data when using other statistics such as Google Analytics and Alexa alongside AWStats.
So the bottom line with regards to AWStats is to utilise its found keywords and keyphrases, monitor its monthly figures, host your website in different
countries and/or languages based on the countries statistics and so on until you know your website and its audience quite well.