What if you have eight downloadable files and you want to know which of the eight is downloaded the most?

The easy option is to use the Site Overlay feature. However, I found, on a low traffic site, that it did not record clicks on file download links. Please let me know if you find otherwise.

Google provides another option, adding a javascript tracking code to each file download link. This bit of javascript assigns a pageview to the clicks on your file links which Google easily tracks.

Adding the Google Analytics code to your links

a href=”folder-name/file-name.pdf”
onClick=”javascript: pageTracker._trackPageview(‘folder-name/file-name.pdf’);”>
This is a complete code sample

a href=”folder-name/file-name.pdf”
This line is the path to your pdf. I didn’t need to change anything here.

onClick=”javascript: pageTracker._trackPageview(‘folder-name/file-name.pdf’);”>
This line is the tracker code. This is the new Google code that was added.

onClick=”javascript: pageTracker._trackPageview(‘folder-name/fn.pdf’
The file-name.pdf in this line can be any text that you choose. Here it is shortened to fn.pdf.

Bonus: Try a shorter link name

I shortened the file name text compared to the acutal file name so that it would fit nicely in the Google Analytics display.

• Simple cut and paste
• Consider shortening the file name
• Works with any kind of downloadable file, pdf, avi, doc and so on.

Give it a try

Don’t expect to see the results immediately. Google suggests waiting one or two days. I saw results within 30 minutes.

Here is a link to the Google Analytics Help page. http://www.google.com/support/googleanalytics/bin/answer.py?answer=55529&topic=11006

You are invited to share your comments below. Thanks for visiting.

1. FTP (I prefer FileZilla) to your hosting account.
2. Download the header.php file.
3. Navigate to the file location: You path may look like this /public_html/wp-content/themes/<your theme’s name>/
4. Find the </head> tag and paste your code above it. See the specific instructions for your code.

Tracking codes you might be using:

• Google Analytics – Analytics
• Crazy Egg – Heat Map
• Hit Tail – Long Tail Key Words

What tracking codes are you using?

Web Site Analytics and Statistics

How are people finding my site?

Free tools are available to assist you in increasing the effectiveness of your Web site by understanding existing traffic patterns. And you don’t have to be a traffic controller to understand this stuff.

Server Logs —Web servers log basic visitor information, such as the time, date, what IP address sent the visitor to your Web site, and much more.

Statistics software tools—Collect this information, and more, from the text based logs and present bar graphs and pie charts showing visitor statistics over a specified period of time.

Analytics software tools—These tools require installing tracking software on each Web page, to collect even more data which you can then interpret to learn even more about your customers.Fees for analytics tools range from free to hundreds of dollars per month. A free tool such as Google Analytics is a great choice for small and large businesses.

Here are questions and answers that illustrate the value of analytics tools:

Q. Where are your visitors located?

A. Geographic information can inform your advertising purchasing decisions. You may decide that an overseas market warrants providing language translation on your web site.

Q. Which search engine is bringing the most visitors?

A. If one search engine is providing most of the traffic. you may choose to focus your marketing efforts with that search engine, or you may wish to balance your results out by advertising more with another search engine.

Q. What keywords do visitors use to reach your site from the search engines?

A. Once you know which keywords are bringing visitors, you can then optimize your Web site to include the right keywords on the pages that you want visitors to land on.I found that a visitor arrived at my site after searching for “testimonials law sites”. As of this writing, my Web site ranks number 7 in Google (bottom of the first page). Try the query!

Q. Which Web sites send the most traffic your way?

A. If you know that visitors are coming from a particular web site, see what you can do to enhance the linking from that site to get more traffic. At a minimum, keep up a good relationship.

Q. Most visitors are landing on your Contact Us page. What should you do?

A. If your goal is for folks to contact you, and they are, then great. But, if you want visitors to read about your products or services, then they are still a click away. Adjustments are required in this case to direct the traffic to the desired page.

Q. Why do most visitors leave your web site after looking at X page?

A. If they leave after looking at one page, I would be concerned about what was on that page, and what brought them there. Their expectations are not aligned with the page content.

Q. Would you value a list of the most visited pages on your Web site?

A. If visitors are spending a lot of time on a certain page, discover if this is beneficial or not. Are they not finding what they need or are they absolutely entranced with your offering?

An analytics tool is a requirement if you are paying advertisers. Without these tools, it is like taking a road trip without a map.

The analytics tools allow you to track your campaign in real time so that you can make important adjustments, monitor for click fraud and revise your web site and advertising copy. It is invaluable for A/B split testing.

Even if you are not using Google Adwords or Yahoo Search Marketing to drive traffic to your site, here is what can you do now.

1) Review the statistics provided by your hosting company. 

    If you host with JBS Partners, here is how:

    1 – Go to www.jbspartners.net/cpanel and login

    2 – click on the Web/FTP stats icon

    3 – Click on awstats, the first listing 4 – Review your statistics

2) Setup Google Analytics yourself, or speak with JBS Partners about setting it up for you.