Tracking Traffic and Performance
Its time to setup some way of tracking your site’s performance.
Sorry, I do NOT recommend to use Google WebMaster Tools. They’re far too nosy for me. The entrepreneur in me says that if Google wants data about my site to help improve their index, they should pay for it. What’s wrong with that thinking? Its a business expense like any other. They can certainly afford it. I certainly see no reason whatsoever that I should give it to them for free.
Use your main gmail account to create a free StatCounter account or add your new site to an existing one. You should have their plug-in already installed. It helps them recognize your pages. They provide a nice set of extremely useful reports about the sources and amount of traffic you receive as well as user activity such as entry and exit pages. They also report the all important bounce rate and time on page statistics.
Another of many possible performance tracking methods would involve adding another plug-in. Some interesting ones include:
- Heatmap for WordPress
- Provides Realtime analytics
- WassUp Real Time Analytics
- Simple Feed Stats
Find them in the WordPress repository.
There is one thing we need to discuss briefly before moving to building out the site and that is Site Security”.
