Domain name registration is the first step to start your website. Like naming a newborn child, your website too requires a name to be known and referred to on web. Domain name registration is about identifying your website on the net.

In this article, we provide a few important guidelines, which one should keep in mind while registering a new Domain name.

1. It should not be as easy to confuse it with any other popular domain name, but at the same time, it should be unique and easy to remember and most importantly relevant to your line of business and avoid long and hyphenated domains which are not good because they add to confusion. Moreover, people rarely remember them, so keep it short, simple and easy to type.
2. Keep your target audience in mind: Before you pick a domain name you should know your target audience, and what you intend to offer them.
3. Prefer dot-com: using a .com version of a URL is better than other versions, but if you’re serving only a particular area or specific country, then a country specific domain is better.
4. Protect your brand name: Register your name with multiple extensions in order to avoid competitors using your name with different extension. For example, domain name such as propertysensex.com when registering multiple extensions like propertysensex.net and propertysensex.org, this can help you capture a wider audience. When visitors arrive at the alternate extension domains, you can redirect them to your website.
5. Keyword: Try to use major keywords in your domain (keywords which potential customers are likely to use to search your line of business).
6. Descriptive Domain Names: A visitor may intend to visit johntravels.com, but mistakenly type jhontravels.com instead. By anticipating these typing errors and registering them as domain names, you can catch visitors before they are led by a competitor who may use the same strategy to lure your visitors to their own site.
7. Domain Registration Term: it’s always better to book a domain for 2 to 5 years, than for a short period say one year. Search engines may view a long-term domain name commitment favorably when indexing your site.
8. Private Domain Registration: private domain registration is more of a necessity than a luxury; still many continue to neglect this critical component of domain name registration. For a small monthly fee, private domain registration can keep your personal contact information out of the WHOIS database, where it is available to the public through a simple domain search.
9. Secure Your Domain Name Registration: By locking your domain name, you protect it from both unauthorized activity and human errors. When your domain is protected, a third party cannot transfer your domain to a different registrar without your consent. By locking domain name you also prevent possible accidental changes to your domain name servers, which can disrupt your website and business email.
10. Register both the full name and its abbreviation.
If your chosen name is quite long; register both its full version, as well as its abbreviation. Many big firms failed to do this and have seen the consequences of this oversight. An example is Reliance Industries which only registered www.ril.com but not www.reliance.com or www.relianceindustries.com
11. It should not be totally different from the website theme for e.g. Fairtilizer.com sound like a website related to fertilizers but it’s a music website.
12. Avoid copyright infringement.
13. Avoid using numbers in domain name
14. Always choose a reputed registrar for your domain

Domain Name Registrar:
Domain names can be purchased from a variety of domain name registrars.

Table1: Top Domain Registrars in USA

Table2: Top Domain Registrars by Total Domains
06/29/2009 – 07/20/2009

Source: http://www.webhosting.info/registrars/fastest-growing-registrars/global/

Configuring the Domain Name

After registering the domain names, you need to provide the IP address for the name servers you want the domain name to point to. You can contact your hosting company support department and they will assist you. You need IP addresses from your hosting company and edit the same into domain DNS section in your domain control panel.

Domain-related Magazines and Weblogs
http://www.domaineditorial.com/
http://blog.domaintools.com/
http://www.dailydomainer.com/

Domain Tools
http://www.dnsstuff.com/
http://www.domaintools.com/

We would be glad to hear any comments and views about this article.

When it comes to web designing & development, you have a lot of career options now a days and freelancing is one such interesting and well paying option. It also doesn’t demand high starting cost as is required to start own business.

In this article, we are focusing on the points which are necessary to become a successful freelancer.

1. Get Started: Start by creating a site for yourself, volunteer to make sites for others, and then eventually you can find people who will pay you to make their sites.
2. Set up your office: If you are freelancing full-time you will be spending a very large amount of time each day in your home office, Ensure that it is a comfortable place that allows you to focus on your work without any distraction
3. Time: Work out your working schedule and strictly follow it. Set working hours will make you more disciplined and focused at work.
4. Carve a niche for yourself, Decide on your market, Some people focus on non-profit groups, while others on local clients so there’s a neighborly touch, some target small and large businesses. It’s your choice, but you should decide so that you don’t waste your energy on a site that you might not strike cord with targeted market.
5. Once you’ve decided on your market, you need to decide how and how much to charge. Create a package structure to share with your clients.
6. Then comes, competitive advantage. You need to find something that sets your business apart. Why should someone choose you to design/develop their pages over others? You can differentiate either in terms of better customer service, price and/or faster delivery or whatever you think you are good at.
7. Promotion: Promoting yourself is important to get more business. The word of mouth is one of the best promotion methods. Put your business information in your email signature, make sure your website accurately depicts your expertise, and do volunteer if you haven’t found enough work yet. Create a chain of reference thorough your friends and contacts.
8. Your portfolio site can do wonders: One of the biggest lead generators for a freelancer is the online portfolio. For many successful freelancers, their portfolio site is responsible for generating most of the leads and ultimately clients. So ensure that you give plenty of time and attention to your portfolio site.
9. Start a blog: As a freelancer, you have plenty of options to market your services and one of them is to start a blog section. Designers don’t generally use their blogs to directly promote their services, but through your blogs you can demonstrate your expertise, show your knowledge in the field and ultimately blogging helps in building a reputation and you can attract some traffic to your site in this way.
10. Networking can work: Involve yourself in a strong network of other professionals like other designers, web developers, SEOs, marketers, small business owners, and anyone else that you would have potential to work with in some capacity. Networking takes effort, but it can be fruitful, through successful networking you can generate leads, get information about new projects and timely advices and guidance. Your networking efforts ideally should include both online and offline activities
11. Social Media: It is important to utilize social networking sites such as Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook to get your name and business out there. Use it to establish yourself as an expert in your area, offer great links and advice, but keep talking of your own business to a minimum.

A Few Final Points to remember….
12. Be honest with your clients regarding your expertise, charges and delivery date
13. Reply to Emails Promptly.
14. Under promise and over deliver
15. Make timely deliveries
17. Try to provide money back guarantee
18. NDA is very commonly asked so be prepared with the agreement

Comments and views about the article are welcome; you can share your ideas and knowledge which may be useful for our readers.

Microsoft released IE7 in 2006, and the subsequent version, IE8, in March 2009. IE8 offers a number of improvements in RSS, CSS and Ajax-based designs. The latest version offers support for various Web standards. IE8 supports Accessible Rich Internet Applications (ARIA) specification for enhanced accessibility in Ajax-based RIAs. All these factors make IE8 more flexible and easy to work with.

IE6 faces a number of compatibility issues in today’s Web design environment. It does not provide the transparency required in PNG imaging. There are different CSS styles applied for IE6, adding the woes to Web site designers. Also, IE6 does not support some of the latest CSS and HTML features. As a result, the Web site design does not produce the desired impact.

We could use JavaScript fixes for the transparency issues in IE6, as well as a number of fixes available for other issues. The question is: how long? Why not look for a whole new option instead of fixing the old ones? I think, it’s time to rethink our strategy and make a step forward in favor of higher versions.

With the popularity of Firefox, Mozilla and Google Chrome, there are more arguments in favor of upgrading the browser. Several leading developers have stopped supporting IE6. Google’s decision to stop supporting IE6 in 2010 has in a way encouraged developers to look for the new browser. With this announcement from the Internet major, developers are a bit relieved from the difficult task of fixing IE6 bugs in CSS. Popular Word press platforms like Woo Themes have already dropped their support for IE6. Many are likely to follow their footsteps to bring the wonderful results of today’s Web design applications to users’ Web sites. IE6 is also not the option for mobile applications developers like Apple’s Mobile Me.

The only good news for IE6 supporters is that the old browser still remains the favorite choice for several users. This leads to another question: Can IE6 still be the browser option for you? Well, it can be, if your Web site does not demand high levels of interaction with customers. You may wait till most users upgrade their browser. In this case, you will have to find out how much you lose and calculate the loss against the additional development time required to upgrade to IE7 or higher.

Many developers are reluctant to say ‘good bye’ to their favorite browser they have been quite familiar with. They admit there are developmental issues and compatibility concerns, yet they are willing to cope with it by applying fixes.

In light of so many challenges with IE6 and also with growing popularity of later version of IE, IE6 market share is dwindling with time. I would say now is the time that we start looking beyond IE6.

The recent recession (i would rather say economic doomsday) paralyzed the world economy. Such was its effect on the global economy that some very big names in the market were completely swept off their feet, for e.g Lehmann Brothers, the largest banking and financial services in the United States declared its bankruptcy. This was considered as the most dreaded economic downturn after the world war 2. With recession, many companies eroded their extra expenses but cutting costs and services in almost every manner. The phase saw many professionals losing their jobs, many organization their entity, and almost every individual worried. But beneath all the hostile artifacts, there was one sector that remain undeterred and unaffected. Interestingly, it grew rapidly and was the sole beneficiary of “Recession”. What was it? It was outsourcing.

During the period where even top MNCs were facing the ire of economic downturn, “outsourcing” went the other way. This term co relates to the definition ” Outsourcing involves the contracting out of a business function to an external provider”. It works on a theory, where two organizations may enter a contractual agreement involving an exchange of services and payments. Offshore outsourcing is another related term which refers to business proposition where the services an payments are outsource with suppliers outside the nation. Now the question arises, why is it the lone benefactor of the recession. Well, the answer lies within, the companies outsource some part of their business to an outsourcing agent – the reason can be either unavailability of resources required for the particular project, or to save cost and increase the revenue.

Things might be a bit more clear now, if we have a closer look at the pros associated with outsourcing, the major and the most important advantage is cost cutting. And cost cutting, is what was required in the “recession period”. We will take another instance to strengthen this, almost everyone might have noticed the fact that during the phase where companies were crumbling, and the jobs vanishing. Outsourcing was the only sector which was always looking for more and more employees, be it a BPO or KPO- pick up any newspaper and you will agree to this . Figures estimate that outsourcing in India witnessed a growth of almost 25% during 2008-09 (recession period) with approximately $ 400 billion investment. So, now we might have a better idea as to why the recession was a boon for outsourcing.

In this article we’ll look at eleven specific factors that can increase number of checkouts on any PSD to HTML service provider’s website

1.    Code Quality
When you are claiming to write quality code to your visitors, its very necessary that your own website code is clean, structured, w3c validated and must work on all common browsers. Good HTML code is important for every website, but it’s a basic requirement for the HTML providers’ website.

Code should be clean, CSS based, w3c validated, and properly tested on IE6, IE7, IE8, Firefox, Safari, opera and Chrome.

HTML coders often face challenges with browser compatibility because of the number of browsers available. There are companies like browser cam, litmusapp etc who provides services where user can check their website on almost on all the browsers with many different option. One such good list of all those service providers are available at: 10 Helpful Resources for Cross Browser Testing.

2.    Adequate information on the website:
PSD to HTML is a fast turn around service. It’s an industry where turnaround is generally 8-10 hours. In such case, its very important from visitor’s point of view to have all the information related the package, cost, timeline, Refund policy, workflow and contact details, online and easily accessible.

3.    Contact Details
It’s very important to have easily accessible contact details. It’s a online business so its always advisable to display company address, phone number, time zone, and if possible live chat or other instant messengers id.

4.    Effective Refund Policy
Website should have refund policy. It provides a kind of an assurance to the buyers.

5.    Satisfaction Guarantee
Most of the providers provide 100% satisfaction guarantee in terms if code is not good or not delivered on time, they will work until it’s done as per buyers satisfaction. Even some of the providers also provide 100% money back guarantee.

6.    Accurate Packages Cost
When most of the orders are placed online, its necessary to have all the details related to the cost on the website. It’s not feasible for buyers to mail the design first and then wait for price estimation. Everything should be clearly mentioned on the website and always avoid surprises in terms of hidden cost.

7.    Turn around Time
Like package cost, turnaround time should be available on the website. Not only display the turnaround time for home page but also for the inner pages.

8.    Clientele
Clientele plays a very important role in any online business. Most of the people use it as a testament for the quality of the work. In case if you are new in the industry and don’t have enough client names, then its advisable to pay more attention to the website design and information architecture. Provide satisfaction and money back guarantee to earn the confidence. And must have better mode of communication like phone number and live chat.

9.    Portfolio
Portfolio is equivalent important for any psd to html service provider’s website. It’s not required to display a huge list of the work but it’s a good idea to mention the samples on which you are really proud of. Try to show some complicated design, some simple design, some JavaScript work and if you provide, then samples of all other 3rd party application like wordpress, Joomla, Drupal, Movable type etc.

10.    Online Order form
Easy, clean, secure and straightforward form is critical to any e-commerce website. If its hard or complicated for users to make selection or find information like package cost, turnaround time, what’s includes in the package, the visitors will definitely wont spend much time on figuring things out and will move out from the website. Ideally order form should have all the required information with in limited words and should not involve too many steps to place order. Ideally it should be of one page.

11.    Overcomplicated website with lot of JavaScript
The focus of any HTML provider website must be on showcasing their code expertise. A website that is heavy with not so required JavaScript will always distract the user. Also, it can create unnecessary interruption in some of the browsers. Its always required to make the website user friendly.

The best part of Wordpress is its flexibility. Plugins can extend WordPress to do almost anything one can imagine.

We contacted many Wordpress coders and created the list of most commonly used plugins for wordpress.

• Akismet



Website: (http://akismet.com/)

As per wordpress website: Akismet checks your comments against the Akismet web service to see if they look like spam or not and lets you review the spam it catches under your blog’s “Comments” admin screen.

Requires WordPress Version: 2.0 or higher

Version 2.2.6

Updated 2009-7-20

Downloads 2,004,971

Average Rating: 4 out of 5

• All in One SEO Pack for WordPress




Website:  (http://wp.uberdose.com/2007/03/24/all-in-one-seo-pack/)

As per wordpress website: Optimizes your Wordpress blog for Search Engines (Search Engine Optimization).

Requires WordPress Version: 2.1 or higher

version 1.6.8.1

Updated 2009-11-12

Downloads 4,010,038

Average Rating: 3.9 out of  5

• Dagon Design Sitemap Generator for WordPress



Website: (http://www.dagondesign.com/articles/sitemap-generator-plugin-for-wordpress/)

As per wordpress website: This plugin creates a sitemap for your WordPress powered site. This is not just another XML sitemap plugin, but rather a true sitemap generator which is highly customizable from its own options page in the WordPress admin panel. Some of its features include: support for multi-level categories and pages, category/page exclusion, multiple-page generation with navigation, permalink support, choose what to display, what order to list items in, show comment counts and/or post dates, and much more.

Requires WordPress Version: 2.1 or higher

Version 3.15

Updated 2008-9-18

Downloads 90,084

Average Rating  4 out of  5

• Google XML Sitemaps for WordPress



Website: (http://www.arnebrachhold.de/redir/sitemap-home/)

As per wordpress website: This plugin will generate a special XML sitemap which will help search engines like Google, Bing, Yahoo and Ask.com to better index your blog. With such a sitemap, it’s much easier for the crawlers to see the complete structure of your site and retrieve it more efficiently. The plugin supports all kinds of WordPress generated pages as well as custom URLs. Additionally it notifies all major search engines every time you create a post about the new content.

Requires WordPress Version: 2.1 or higher

Version 3.2

Updated 2009-11-22

Downloads 2,775,918

Average Rating 4.2 out of  5

• Google Analyticator:



Website: (http://ronaldheft.com/code/analyticator/)

As per wordpress website: Google Analyticator adds the necessary JavaScript code to enable Google Analytics logging on any WordPress blog. This eliminates the need to edit your template code to begin logging. Google Analyticator also includes several widgets for displaying Analytics data in the admin and on your blog.
Requires WordPress Version: 2.7 or higher

Version 6.0.1

Updated 2009-12-7

Downloads 634,710

Average Rating: 4 out of 5

• Contact Form for WordPress



Website: (http://www.642weather.com/weather/scripts.php)

As per wordpress website: Fast and Secure Contact Form for WordPress. This contact form lets your visitors send you a quick E-mail message. Blocks all common spammer tactics. Spam is no longer a problem. Includes a CAPTCHA and Akismet support. Does not require JavaScript. Easy and Quick 3 step install.

Requires WordPress Version: 2.6 or higher

version 1.9.5

Updated 2009-12-4

Downloads 82,470

Average Ratin 5 out of 5

• Add to any



Website: (http://www.addtoany.com/)

As per wordpress website: Help readers share, save, bookmark, and email your posts and pages using any service, such as Facebook, Twitter, Digg, Delicious, and over 100 more social bookmarking and sharing sites. The button comes with AddToAny’s customizable Smart Menu, which places the services visitors use at the top of the menu, based on each visitor’s browsing

history.

Requires WordPress Version: 2.0 or higher

Version .9.9.4.2

Updated 2009-12-4

Downloads 662,417

Average Rating  4 out of 5

• Twitter WordPress integration



Website:   (http://alexking.org/projects/wordpress)

As per wordpress website: Twitter Tools is a plugin that creates a complete integration between your WordPress blog and your Twitter account.

Requires WordPress Version: 2.3 or higher

version 2.0

Updated 2009-8-3

Downloads 317,377

Average Rating 3.9 out of 5

• WP-Super Cache for WordPress

Website: (http://ocaoimh.ie/wp-super-cache/)

As per wordpress website: This plugin generates static html files from your dynamic WordPress blog. After a html file is generated your webserver will serve that file instead of processing the comparatively heavier and more expensive WordPress PHP scripts.

Requires WordPress Version: 2.6 or higher

version 0.9.8

Updated 2009-11-18

Downloads 915,922

Average Rating 4 out of 5

10 Best PSD to Wordpress service Providers

1. http://www.seo-semantic-xhtml.com/



Charges: $288

Timeline: 3 working days

Country: USA

Contact number: (888) 459- 7668

2. http://wordpressintegration.com/



Charges: $149

Timeline: 3 working days

Country: USA

Contact number: (888) 523 – 6088

3. http://psdtowp.com/



Charges: $400

Timeline: 3 working days

Country: NA

Contact number: NA

4. http://wpfrompsd.com/



Charges: $270

Timeline: 3 working days

Country: USA

Contact number: (888) 607-6624

5. http://wpcoder.com/



Charges: $550

Timeline: NA

Country: NA

Contact number: NA

6. http://xhtmlthis.com/



Charges: NA

Timeline: NA

Country: NA

Contact number: NA

7. http://www.psd2html.com/



Charges: $354

Timeline: NA

Country: USA

Contact number: 888 752 3076

8. http://www.tsquez.com/



Charges: NA

Timeline: NA

Country: NA

Contact number: 928 567 4273

9. http://www.sramekdesign.com/



Charges: NA

Timeline: NA

Country: NA

Contact number: NA

10. http://www.psdtoany.com/



Charges: NA

Timeline: NA

Country: NA

Contact number: NA

Let us know if you ever worked with any of the above mentioned providers and how was the experience. Also, feel free to add your choice of psd to wp provider in the list.

XHTML serves the basic objective of visual consistency across all the browsers and platforms. The coding for XHTML is done in a unique fashion so that the search engines optimize the websites. Some people who use HTML for their websites but want to update their codes to XHTML can follow these tips.

• Lowercase must be used for all the tags

All <P> tags must be replaced with <p>. For convenience, turn off the caps lock function, match the case and find-replace the tags with the lowercase.

• All tags must be closed

Once the tags are written, they must be closed either in case of paragraphs or any other tag like <p> and following it with </p>. Any tag without a closing element like <img> or <br> can be closed with as slash “/” before “>” (/>). You even need to close the header tags: <meta name = “keywords content = “keywords, go, here”/>. This habit needs to be inculcated to avoid errors in coding.

• Tags must be nested properly

The tags are closed just in the same manner as they are closed.

WRONG – <p><strong>Hi!</p></strong>

CORRECT – <p><strong>Hi! </strong></p>

So, don’t do it the wrong way.

• Double speech marks must be used

Double speech marks are important to use inside the tags.

For eg : in an image tag: WRONG – height = 50, CORRECT – height = “50”

• Alt tags must be added

Alt tag is an important feature while using the image as it provides consistency in the images. The alt tags provide a description to the pictures which forms the visual structure. If you have spacer images, use alt = “” rather than using alt = “spacer”. Avoid the use of word space in the speech marks.

• Avoid <font> tags

Use the basic CSS layout functions for font tags. To style and size your text, using paragraph or span tag is undoubtedly a better proposition.

• Character entity codes must be used

Using simple codes of character entity helps in upgradation of HTML to XHTML.

• CSS coding for your sites

CSS coding makes the size of the website shrink and the control over the site increases exceptionally. This certainly helps to optimise the site for major search engines.

Following these steps would give a full control over your newly coded XHTML website. You can join the competition in the rest of the web world and feel superior.

With diverse objectives, technologies and access of resources, it is important to select the correct web analytics tool compatible with your website or blog. Before taking a decision, it is essential to hold a brain-storming session so as to pick the ideal tool. Hence, you must:

• Estimate the needs and demands of your business
• Evaluate the products from all aspects
• Assess the interest of the company and necessary support required either technical or training
• Study the track record of the company

The birth of Google Analytics and Crazy Egg provided an opportunity for the website owners to keep a close eye on the rise or fall of their product.  Certain tools which assist in managing vital marketplace opinion are listed below.

Clicky

Clicky is in a league of its own as it provides real time analytics. A very clean and functional UI aims to monitor, analyze and react instantaneously to the traffic on website or blog. The web analytics service also enables services with an iPhone, to keep you reported when you are on the move. The services are unbeatable as the stats detailing is stupendous and the interface is easy to digest.

Google Analytics

The most favorite and popular web analytics service provider – Google Analytics offers free analytics tools. The analytics tools and features are powerful, convenient and easy-to-use as they analyze the data in a completely innovative manner. The custom reporting feature introduced by Google Analytics prepares you to conceive better ideas and strategies for marketing websites and attracting larger traffic. This web analytics provide deep insights with the help of its advanced segmentation and motion charts feature.

Reinvigorate

Reinvigorate is another real-time stat tracking program which helps to gain an insight about the audience and help you perform better. It measures the progress on hourly, weekly and monthly basis by watching the granular visitor traffic. Alerts are triggered by some actions on the site. The heat map technology feature enables you to see the spots where the visitors are clicking.

Piwik

Piwik is a unique PHP MySQL software program which provides elaborate reporting about the visitors on your website. It is an open source downloadable web analytics software program and serves as a powerful alternative to Google Analytics. The fully customizable user interface makes Piwik user friendly and allows building your own web analytics plugins. You can install Piwik on your server to get started and the important statistics can be accessed using open APIs.

Yahoo! Web Analytics

Yahoo! Web Analytics is a powerful data collecting tool which provides a deep insight about the demographics and psychographics of the visitors of the website. The application is free and enables flexible dashboards, segmentation tools, and campaign management features. The web analytics tools services by Yahoo! focuses on multiple-user groups and operates at an enterprise level. The Yahoo! tools assist in delivering raw and non-aggregated data in forms of graphs, custom-designed (and printable) reports, and real-time data tracking.

WordPress.com Stats

WordPress doesn’t have too many features rather it grabs attention with its unique stats system. The stats system identifies the strength of the visitors and identifies the reason behind their interest in the blog. You can enable a plugin for your individually hosted WordPress blog.

Woopra

Woopra is a complete package when it comes to web analytics applications. It is an information rich, user-friendly, real time web tracking system. Woopra’s healthy mix of an intuitive management system and chat feature enables communication with the users while running on multiple domains. You will require a private beta registeration as Woopra is available in beta. Woopra’s unparalleled user interface claims to deliver an extensive collection of statistics about the visitors. There are a few additional features alongwith its open API and plugins specifically designed for convenient client application.

FireStats

Firestats is a refreshing statistic management system. The important statistics about the visitors are recorded and enables as footer on the blog. It runs on PHP 4.4.2 or My SQL,while Unix like operating system is preferred but users also use it on Windows.

GoingUp

GoingUp! measures the performance of your website from all aspects. Its user-friendly interface incorporates powerful web analytics & SEO tools. Enabled with an AJAX rich interface, GoingUp! turns out to be your website’s best friend. It offers complete website statistics, tracks keyword positions, analyses actions & progress on a customized dashboard.

Mint

Mint delivers as a self-hosted and paid web analytics program with an uncomplicated interface. Mint currently runs on version 2.17 and has a plugin named – Pepper. It is an extensible web analytics site which helps to keep a count of the visits, referrers, popular pages and searches on its trouble-free dashboard.

Blog Tracker

IceRocket Blog Tracker is an invisible blog tracker which assesses the number of visits providing accurate blog statistics. It is a FREE light weight analytics tool for blogs which doesn’t put any ads on the blog but monitor the blog in real-time.

Snoop

Snoop is a dedicated connection which instantly informs about comments on blogs, forums, purchases, references from other sites etc. It is a desktop based application running on platforms Mac OS X and Windows XP/Vista. Its produces specific sounds for different events or actions. The Name Tag integration helps you to tag the visitor.

BBClone

BBClone is a simple PHP based server application which helps you track the interest of the visitor. It is a server-side web application which supports in 32 languages. BBClone web counter provides detailed data like IP address, browser of the visitor. This handy application for webmasters is log-file based and is integrated with publishing platforms like Drupal, WordPress and Textpattern.

JAWStats

JAWStats is a free server-based Web analytics and statistics application package. It runs with the popular AWStats by using its log-files and processing the output in its own format. This multi-language and fully-skinnable application produces charts, graphs and tables about the traffic on the website. The convenience of switching between the logs of different files helps to view the archival information. JAWStats does not interfere with the AWStats and updates your stats using the interface.

4Q

4Q relies on collecting actual visitor feedback rather than tracking the number of people. Web analytics is about numbers but 4Q determines the objective of the visitor by tracking interests and perceptions of the visitor through an exit survey. This first hand information helps to record the performance of the website and thereby improve the numerical.

MochiBot

MochiBot is a free Web analytics tracking tool specifically designed for Flash assets. It analyses the popularity of your Flash game or animation, effectiveness of Viral Flash markting strategies, reach of Flash videos, podcasts or video blogs. MochiBot follows and track people who use Flash content so as to protect the content and avoid theft. It also helps to keep a record of your performance. The lines in ActionScript code to instal MochiBot are very easy to copy.

Grape Web Statistics

GrapeWeb Statistics is a free, open source program enabling the web developers to keep a close watch on the number of visitors accessing their site. It comes with a clean & sleek interface enabled with extensions API to expand and customize its installation. Currently in the beta testing stage, it may report bugs through launchpad bug reporting system or the forums. Grape is specialized in solving web analytics Hotel problem as the stats are fluid and can be cross-checked at any point of time.

AnalyTwits

Twitter, the largest social networking site has introduced 8 tools for analysis of the visitors. These tools serve different functions by crawling through Twitter streams and are becoming quite popular. It is best to use combination of tools to get an insight about the activities on Twitter. These tools are: Twitalyzer, Microplaza, Twist, Twtturly, Tweetstats, Twitter Friend, Thummit QuickRate and TweetEffect.

We have peeped into the positives of the web analytics tools but there are a few features which restrict the use of these tools and announce them as a failure. There has been one major problem with Web Analytics as quoted by Avinash kaushik of 4Q, “the yearning and struggle to understanding the “Why”.” The tools which measure the performance and activity of the visitors on the website are customized. But, there are a few reasons which have betrayed the promises of bridging the gap between the visitor and the website manager. Lack of adequate training and analytical resources, inability to customize business needs,  rising complexity due to cumulative sums of data are reasons for its failure.

Hotel problem has been a major source of confusion for the web analytics users. The web software add the number of unique visitors for particular time period correctly but when the numbers (for days and months) are compared, they don’t tally and lead to complications. The inability to understand simple metric definitions, Web analytics have faced a lot of ruckus from the users. The sum of new visitors and repeat visitors comes out to be unequal and leads to greater misconceptions.

Thus, it is always advisable to get a hands-on experience on the web analytics tools before using them for your website or blog. It is even more important to get the perfect match of the web analytics program for your website.