3 Benefits Of Web Analytics

Web analytics is the process of measuring site statistics and analyzing traffic behavior. Here are there of the main benefits of web analytics.

It is typical for any business to do some data analysis. Data analysis is used to determine sales, profit, loss rate, and market interest. However, in terms of establishing a strong e-presence for your website, there is one tool that you could used in order to collect necessary data that you would need to promote your site.

Web analytics has been gaining steady popularity among websites, blogs and portals. It is used to analyze market trends and to identify website users or visitors. It is also used to determine the behavior of website users. It is a great tool to determine your latest website trends and your visitors’ or users’ preferences in terms of site features. Here are the benefits of web analytics.

Number 1: It helps monitor your visitors and users

With web analytics, you would know how long your visitor stayed in your website, who they are and where they came from. You will be able to know their clickstreams, the keywords they used, and how they came to be in your website (referrer pages, search engines, etc). You would be able to determine how many times a user or a visitor returned to your website and which pages were given preference.

In fact, a web analytics tool would tell you your website usage down to the last specifics. It would tell you about your visitor’s nationality and language. It can even pinpoint the city of origin. Of course, it will tell you the IP addresses and the host used for access. Further analysis would reveal if your visitors were there to actually check out your site or if they were mere strays. Most certainly, you will know how many visitors you get daily.

Number 2: It can help you optimize your website

Once you have carefully studied the actions of your visitors or web users, you would be able to act accordingly in order to optimize your website. You would also have an idea about the things that need changing and the aspects of your website that may appeal more to your market. You would know which pages are most viewed and which are basically ignored. You would be able to adjust certain aspects of your website that need improvement or adjustments. You could then fix any technical problems; or you could also improve, streamline or reshape site navigation to better assist your site users or visitors.

Number 3: It can help you formulate a sales and e-marketing plan

Web analytics will be able to assist you in preparing for an e-marketing plan and course of action. This will be more effective because your plan would be based on actual facts and not mere probabilities. You would be able to really know what your market wants. By tracking the items which were highly viewed, you would learn which products received the highest response. You would also be able to enhance other programs that you have already employed like pay-per-click or PPC advertising. You would be able to get more clients, as well as monitor and keep your clients interested.

3 Differences between Shared and Dedicated Hosting

When it comes to making the all-important choice of what web hosting method to use the choices come down to shared hosting and dedicated hosting. There are so many arguments arguing for both shared hosting and dedicated hosting. Perhaps it is time to shed a little light on this web hosting dilemma.

First of all, let's deal with the all-important question of server access. Needless to say, if you choose to use shared web hosting you will be sharing space with other businesses. Now your parents may have told you it is good to share but that is not always true in the world of web hosting. In the world of web hosting shared is synonymous with limited access.

A limited access approach to web hosting means that your access is limited through a control panel that is provided by the hosting provider. And if the web hosting provider is in charge of the control panel then they are in control of your access. A lack of control to your web hosting means a lack of control for every part of your web hosting needs.

On the other hand, a dedicated hosting server gives you complete and total access. Now doesn't that sound a lot better? Full access in the form of dedicated hosting means that you get the final say in all web hosting decisions. Dedicated hosting also gives you access to the remote desktop manager, which allows you to have access to the machines desktop.

Next we look at web hosting from the perspective of exclusive use. Getting back to the concept of shared web hosting, the question needs to be asked, how much do you like to share? With shared hosting you are sharing a server with roughly 500-1000 other websites. Wow, that's a lot of neighbors in your cyber neighborhood. With these many other websites clamoring for web hosting you may not always have access to all the server's resources. Other websites may be taking up more web hosting resources than you are.

A dedicated hosting service however, gives you exclusive access to all the resources the dedicated hosting server has to offer. Your information alone is responsible for the performance of the server.

Finally lets deal with scalability in regards to the issue of web hosting. Most shared web hosting services do not allow you to install your own applications on the web hosting service. They have a set configuration and they do not go outside the box, thereby limiting your growth.

A dedicated hosting service gives you complete control. Your IT department can install any applications that are necessary for your web hosting needs. Again more control means a more effective web hosting service.

So all in all, it would seem that dedicated hosting is a far more viable option for most businesses web hosting needs. Dedicated hosting gives you more control and, in the world of web hosting, it's all about control.
limiting your growth.

A dedicated hosting service gives you complete control. Your IT department can install any applications that are necessary for your web hosting needs. Again more control means a more effective web hosting service.

So all in all, it would seem that dedicated hosting is a far more viable option for most businesses web hosting needs. Dedicated hosting gives you more control and, in the world of web hosting, it's all about control.

'Father' Of The Internet

Tim Berners-Lee, while working as an independent consultant at a nuclear research laboratory in 1980, developed an innovative way of storing information in a program named Enquire.

That work was later used as the foundation for the development of a global hypertext system - popularly known as the Internet or the World Wide Web.

The WWW was developed to increase the ease with which people could exchange information. This became a reality with the introduction of the first WYSWIG (What You See Is What You Get) hypertext web browser which was written by Tim Berners-Lee.

The advantage of the WWW over previous systems was the lack of a need for a centralized server. In short, this meant that it was just as easy to retrieve, as well as link to, a document that was down the hall as across the world.

This was a huge breakthrough in computing science.

The Web and the first web server were released to the hypertext communities in mid 1991, after being released within CERN in late 1990. In order to achieve a coherent standard for the WWW, specifications for URLs, HTML and HTTP were published.

The universality forced by these specifications, the non-dependence on a central server and decision by Berners-Lee not to profit from the WWW led to a high level of adoption of the technology between 1991-94. A ten fold increase in annual traffic was recorded on the first Web server during this period.

With the advent of the Web, a number of spin-off technologies have emerged. A vast array of server side, client side and database languages have been created to fulfill needs of businesses and individuals.

There are two types of programming languages used on the WWW: client-side and server-side.

A client-side language is executed in the users' browser and is not dependent upon the Web server. Client-side programming is done almost exclusively with JavaScript.

A server-side language executes on the Web server. In recent years server-side programming has become more popular than client-side programming because it is independent of the type of browser that the surfer is using. Programmers refer to this as being 'cross-platform'. Perl, PHP, ASP and JSP are popular client-side programming languages.

Databases have been developed to allow for 'dynamic' websites.

Dynamic websites allow for a high level of personalization when retrieving information.

Whenever you type in values in a form on a web page - whether those values are for a user id and password, the characteristics of your ideal partner or an author's name - it's a 'dynamic' web site. That is just a way of saying that there is a database being used to run the website.

Popular databases used include MySQL, PostgreSQL, Microsoft SQL Server and Oracle.

An area of the WWW that Berners-Lee has direct involvement is in his role as the Director of the World Wide Web Consortium (WC3) which has existed since 1994.

The aim of the WC3 is to achieve coherent standards between all companies using web technologies such as HTML, CSS and XML. Prior to the creation of the standards detailed by the WC3, companies used different standards, which led to potential incompatibilities. The WC3 remedied this by creating an open forum - allowing companies to agree on core standards for WWW technologies.

The future of Berners-Lee's influence on modern computing is in the context of the Semantic Web. 'Semantic' means 'meaning'.

A semantic web is one where elements that appear in a document hold some meaning that can be automatically processed by a machine in some form of data gathering. Currently, documents on the WWW written in HTML hold no meaning ­ they're presentation based.

Tim Berners-Lee laid the conceptual foundation for the World Wide Web. It was his initial idea to create a way where information could be freely and easily exchanged. The standards associated with it and the lack of reliance upon a central server, gave the Web a cross platform advantage and independence, which led to its meteoric rise in popularity.

In turn, its popularity spawned and popularized many different programming languages, databases, markup standards, servers - as well as - viruses and worms.

However, while Tim Berners-Lee is the 'father' of the Internet, its development over the years is a result of the efforts of an extraordinary number of individuals. There is little question that 500 or 1,000 years from now, historians will look at the invention of the Internet as one of those rare, seminal historical events - much like Gutenberg's printing press.

1and1 Hosting - Raising the bar

First, I have to admit. I'm a terrible customer. I'm a demanding perfectionist who rarely feels that he is getting his money's worth. This is especially true of hosting providers. In the past four years, I've had to change providers at least six times because I felt that I was not getting what I paid for. This brief commentary is somewhat of a treat for me as I finally get to say something good about a hosting provider!

A little over two years ago I was reading up on the latest technologies in one of my favorite publications, eWeek, when I ran across a nice, full-page ad from 1and1 offering an introductory offer of free hosting for three years. Wait! What! No way! This has got to be too good to be true! Off to the trusty computer I go...

Sure enough, it was the real deal. 1and1 was indeed offering free web hosting for three years to introduce its new public sector hosting service. Well, like any good cash-strapped college student, I stepped right up and got me a piece of the pie. I've got to say, the pie was good too!

After roughly two years of hosting with 1and1, with minimal problems I should say, I started to notice that I was getting dangerously close to the bandwidth allowance my free package had to offer. No big surprise there; these things happen when you're trying to establish an online presence and you offer free downloads. It was time to upgrade my hosting.

At the time, there were no great specials going on at 1and1 so I decided to shop around. That was a tremendous mistake! What I got was a course in how *not* to run a hosting service. I will be polite, this time, and not name and companies, but let's just say stay away from cheap reseller hosting accounts! The uptime is nowhere near what they promise and every time you turn around some idiot is running a script that bogs the server down to a crawl.

After a couple months, a chunk of wasted cash, and several moves back and forth between providers, I finally conceded that 1and1 was indeed the best host I had come across thus far. As luck would have it, I had received an email from 1and1 announcing a great promotion for their free preview package holders (obvious marketing trick, but good timing in my situation). They were offering their top shared Linux package for half the price. Ok, that sounds like a good deal, and it was, but what about next year? Well, this is where it gets even better. Not only did I get the package at half price, but they guaranteed that price for three years with free upgrades!

I might not be the brightest light bulb in the box, but I know a good deal when I see one. So, as I'm sure you've already figured out, I signed up. What I got was a whole lot more than what I bargained for, and honestly, could have hoped for. Almost instantly after upgrading, I noticed that my sites were running faster. I'm assuming that paid customers are placed on less crowded servers.

Then, the first upgrade came. My space and bandwidth were doubled at no extra charge. I thought to myself, cool, I'll take it! A couple weeks later, I was browsing the 1and1 site comparing features for a potential client when I noticed that the package I have had been bumped to ridiculously high levels. Even though I was getting my money's worth at the time, I felt a little bitter that I wasn't getting the full package spec. After all, I was promised that I would get every package upgrade.

Just like any other nightmare client, I promptly dialed billing to give them a piece of my mind. Apparently, the billing agent was no stranger to difficult clients like me. Within a few minutes of talking to me, he got me defused and assured me that my package would be brought up to spec within four weeks. That was two weeks ago. He explained that it was taking more time than expected to upgrade all their current accounts to the new account specs. He really surprised me when he said that I'd actually be getting more than what was currently listed on the site. What?! Ok then! Thank you for your time! Needless to say, I was left feeling very positive about that support call.

Here's where we get into the numbers... When I logged into my account today, I was greeted by some very generous numbers for the package I have. I discovered that I now have 30,000MB of storage and 1,500 GB of transfer on a shared hosting account that normally runs $19.99/mo! Wait! That can't be right! Those are VPS specs! Yup, you read right. 30GB of storage and 1.5TB of transfer for under $20/mo. PLUS, with 1and1, I only pay $5.99 per domain, per year.

Now, let's be real here. Those numbers are great and all, but other providers offer similar specs. What sets 1and1 apart? For starters, uptime! With every other host I've used, uptime was a major issue. This is not so with 1and1. I can count on one hand how many times in the past two years my site was not available and nearly every time it was related to an ISP router, not 1and1! Also, one of the things I've really grown to appreciate is their one-of-a-kind control panel. It's a little slow, but it more than makes up for it in streamlined administration. This is especially true of the domain administration. Even complete n00bs have no problem navigating the 1and1 control panel and managing their package like a pro.

Again, I'm not the easiest person in the world to impress, especially when it comes to hosting providers. Nevertheless, 1and1 has really raised the bar of what a good hosting provider is in my mind. They are now the benchmark by which I will measure all hosting providers. If you are in the market for a good, reliable, affordable hosting provider, I cannot say enough positive about 1and1.

There is only one negative I've found with 1and1 and it's not even really a negative. They're a bit restrictive on script execution. If you think about it, in a shared hosting environment, this is a good thing, and this also explains why the only time I've noticed the server actually being down was during a scheduled hardware upgrade. Now, who's going to complain about a free upgrade in performance?

If you would like more information on 1and1 and the packages they offer, I encourage you to visit their site. Just as a point of reference, I'm running on the Developer Package. I think you'll find that it's a more than adequate package for moderate to heavy traffic sites.