How good stats can improve your Site
The difference a good stat tool can make on your site can be enormous. My first host was OLM, a respected and cheap hosting company. For about $9 a month I got maybe 30 megs of space and my own domain (this one) and email.

I also got a stats tool. This was an extremely basic tool. It showed general traffic information such as hits, IP address visits and data transfers. This basically told me that a few people were hitting my site (besides me) and maybe some bots and that's about it. My view of stats was that they were pretty worthless.

Now, I'm on a new host (www.thinkhost.com) and among other things they offer a very robust stats tool. This tool shows search strings used to find my site, sites linking to my site, actual visits, total data transfers and much more. With this information I've been able to make some modifications to the site and also re-evaluate some of the content on the site. Some stuff I had completely forgotten about showed up in my stats and I now realize the true value of this information.

This is exactly what a good stat tool should do. It should provide you with important, real and usable information about how your site is being used. Without this you are flying blindly and only really know about site use by the actual response you receive from your audience in the form of e-mail or something similar.

Ego-surfing
Another way of getting data about your site is something affectionately referred to as ego-surfing. While ego-surfing sounds like an act of pure vanity it can actually serve as a useful tool for discovering site awareness and what works (or doesn't work) on your site.

Here's how you do it. Go to a popular search engine such as Google.com and type in the name of your site without the .com. So for example: For this site I'd go to Google and type in webraw and if my site is the first result then that is good. If it's not then that means I've got some work to do.

The same can be done with a name or a popular topic on your site or something unique to your site. If your site mentions "blue dogs" then you might type that in. Or you can use an ego-surf in tandem with information from your stats. If I notice that a "red beans" search returns a lot of results in my stats then I may want to do a "black beans" or "red lima beans" ego-surf to see if my site is still ranked highly on the search engine results.

If your site is not on the first or second page of results then there are a few things you can do to remedy that. Here's a list of some simple tips from Technoerotica.com and they are quite simple to employ.

The main point is that using stats can assist in developing a strong site that is worth your time and also that better serves those that are using it. Without good stats this is much harder to achieve.

Traffic Times
Another use for your stats is to pinpoint exactly what block of hours in a day gets the most traffic. If you see the largest spike at 4 in the afternoon then, if you post daily, you should try to get your post up sometime before then. If you post less predictably then pay attention to what days get the most traffic and try to post before those spikes. If you see a spike on a Monday then the weekend is a good time to catch up on your posting.

No, the stats shouldn't dictate when you post but they can help influence some of your decision making.

Browser compatibility
Compatibility is another concern that stats can help with. If you have a site that is marginally compatible with some less popular browsers (obviously every good site is compatible in NS and IE) then stats can reveal how much your site is viewed by others such as Opera, OmniWeb or Konqueror. If you see a significant amount of traffic by these browsers then it would be a good idea to download a copy and test your site in them. If there is not really any traffic then you won't feel so compelled to make adjustments for the lesser known browsers.

Languages
If your stats display what country visitors are viewing your site from then you may want to consider other language options or making better use of graphics. If you notice that a large portion of your visitors are from China you may want to offer information in Chinese or Mandarin. If languages aren't your thing then using very simple, easy to understand graphics can often be a wonderful substitute.

Summary
A good stats tool should be just as important as price, storage space and supported database type when scouting out a Website host. Be sure to ask specific questions when investigating a hosting company.

I have experience with stats for a very large (400,000 unique visitors per month, 5 million hits per month) Website and I know how valuable good stats are towards decision-making on some of the site sections. The larger the site is the more useful good stats become and the more critical they are to the incremental increase in traffic.

Yet, no matter how big or small your site is the value of a good stats tool should not be overlooked. Take a few moments each month to go over your site stats and look for trends, interesting anomalies or just get familiar with how your site is being used. If you work at it you will see your site traffic increase and your site generally improve with time ///