Tourism Internet Marketing U

Using Web Data To Your Advantage

All Web servers maintain a history of Web data or log a list of all Web page requests. Once the Web server has logged all of the requests for individual files, requested from a Web site by its’ visitors, it maintains this information in a log file. These log files include the HTML files and their embedded graphic images and any other associated files that get transmitted through the server. This Web data, or log files, can be analyzed by Web traffic analysis tools to generate the following data:

• The number of visitors to your home page and every other page of your site
• Where the visitors came from in terms of their IP addresses
• How many times each page on your Web site was requested
• What time, day of the week, and season people access your site
• Which browser your visitor is using
• Which keywords or phrases your visitors are using to find your site using a search engine
• Which advertisements are viewed the most on your Web site
• Detailed information on visitors and demographics

This might not sound like very important information; however, there are some very amazing things you can do with this data.

Like any good experiment, you must collect the data first, complete the experiment, and then make the recommendations. By analyzing your web data, you can determine the changes necessary to generate better results.

By tracking the visitors on your Web site in terms of where they spend their time, how they came to your site, and if they do what you want them to do, you can fine-tune your Web site to fit the specific needs of your target market.

There is still so much to learn about web traffic analysis. You can catch up on this topic through my new book 101 Ways to Promote Your Tourism Business Web Site. 

- written by Susan Sweeney, CA, CSP, HoF