Every web hosting package includes a full suite of statistics (sometimes called metrics) that can show you valuable information about your site visitors. There are several stats programs available, however AWstats offers the most insight into your traffic. An even more detailed stats program, called Urchin, is also available as an additional service. Please contact us if you are interested in adding Urchin to your toolbox.

To view stats with AWstats:

1. Login to Cpanel.
2. Click on the WEB/FTP STATS icon.
3. Select AWSTATS.
4. Select the month and year you would like to view statistics for.
5. Scroll through the entire report, or select the area you are interested in by clicking on it in the left-hand navigation column.

Here are some definitions you may find useful:

Unique Visitors - The number of unique visitors to your site. If someone visits your site every day during the month, they are only included once, assuming they visit from the same computer and/or IP address.

Number of Visits - The total number of visits to your site. If someone visits your site every day during the month, each visit will be included in this number.

Pages - This is sometimes referred to as page views, and refers to the total number of pages that your site has displayed. If someone visited your site once during the month and viewed ten different pages, each page they viewed would be included in this number.

Hits - This is often the most recognized but least important number, because a "hit" is registered every single time an element (technically a file such as a page or an image) is opened. If someone visited your site once during the month and viewed ten different pages, and each page had nine photos on it, this one visit would account for 100 "hits."

Bandwidth - This is the amount of data that is transferred from your site to your visitors' computers. Each time a file, such as text, an image, or a song or video is displayed, it uses bandwidth roughly equal to the size of the file. This means that large files, such as videos, use more bandwidth than small files, such as simple text pages. Every account has a bandwidth quota, so this number can be helpful in determining how yours is being allocated.

You will find lots of information in this report. Some of the more helpful statistics include:

• Monthly History
• Daily History
• Visits Duration (how long visitors stayed on your site)
• Viewed (which pages were most frequently viewed, which pages visitors landed on when they arrived, and which pages visitors were on when they left)
• Origin (which sites visitors came to your site from)
• Search (which keywords and keyword phrases were used to find your site)