The importance of using stats when measuring a website’s performance is nothing new.

However, the ‘hit counters’ of old have now been superceded by much more sophisticated monitoring tools. Modern web stats software is capable of giving us incredibly detailed analysis of our website traffic and user behaviour, allowing us to continually improve the performance of our sites.

So why isn’t everyone using these new tools?

It amazes me how many webmasters are still reliant on basic stats tools (often those provided as part of their hosting package), or worse still, no stats at all when making decisions on their website. Trying to make good judgements without the information to base it on is like driving a car with your eyes shut - if you’re lucky you might manage to head in the right direction (though you won’t know it) but it’s more likely you’ll end up hitting a brick wall.

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