Thread: User Counter vs Google Clicks

So exactly what and how does the site count a user? I'm getting 50-85 clicks a day from Google's adwords, but I'm seeing like 10-15 users on the Aspdotnetstorfront counters. Since there is a huge discrepancy I thought I would ask people out there. I've double checked all the links in the ads to confirm they are going to the correct destinations inside the site. The ads do not direct to the home page, but land all over the site in various places. I've also installed Google Analytics code and it is showing a lot more traffic than the admin stats.

Does anyone know?

Where do you see a user counter? In the admin under statistics the anonymous users are users who performed some action to create a customer record. That could be adding something to the cart, starting to checkout, etc. Just browsing around would not create such a record.

The information here should be help you out.

I guess that makes sense. Which then begs the question, what is a good web log package to look at the data that I want to know. Which is "what are people doing on the site and.... stats of the zing zang about them"?

Free is better.... or at least initially.

Standard Google Analytics would be the best place to start. It takes a bit to get the hang of reading the reports, but you can get a really good idea of where customers went on the site, when they left, etc.