Do you want information on who is visiting your site, checking out which pages, and when? Depending on how much detail you need, here are a few options to choose from:
1. Explore the tracking tools that came with your hosting account. Most web hosting companies offer built-in programs that can be accessed via your Control Panel, or through a web interface. One of the most common is AWStats, a script which keeps detailed information on the timing of your site’s traffic, which browser and operating system configurations your viewers use, which pages they viewed the most, which websites referred them to your page and more.
Before you install a new service into your website, it’s worth checking to see if one of these built-in tools may have been running ever since your account was set up – you might have years worth of visitor data you weren’t aware of collecting.
2. Google Analytics is the flagship stats program. By means of some code inserted into each page of your website, you can get incredibly detailed, non-identifying information about your visitors, conversions, ad campaigns and more. This is the solution for power users who want to know as much as they can find out. There is a learning curve, but if you’re able to invest the time you will be rewarded.
3. Jetpack, a plugin for WordPress, provides graphs of your visitor patterns for those who want a more general readout at a glance . It’s accessible via your WordPress dashboard and is useful for seeing how many guests you had on a given day. It collects much of the same data as the above tools, but has convenience going for it, particularly if you regularly log into your website to make updates anyway.