Last updated on October 24th, 2023
Having a portfolio website is an essential aspect of many designers’ lives. Optimizing and monitoring your site will benefit you in many ways. If you seek freelance work and more recognition, you will need to use one or several of these website traffic monitoring methods.
These programs will allow you to monitor many different stats such as total visitors, unique visitors, page views, browsers used, location of users, keywords used to find your site, sites linked to you, and much more.
All this information is key to growing one’s website and freelance career. Most of these programs are very easy to use and install; some are free, and the paid ones are still affordable and have great additional features. If you will use one or more of these programs, I recommend at least setting up Google Analytics.
1. Google Analytics
Google Analytics is the industry standard when it comes to website traffic monitoring. It is incredibly easy to set up and will start collecting data soon after you implement it. You can track everything you could dream of with Google Analytics, and if you are going to use any stat monitoring program, be sure to use this one!
Read More About Google Analytics
2. AWStats
This is another free way to track a good amount of your server’s stats. It is not as in-depth as Google Analytics, but it is free and comes with most web hosting packages, so ask your hosting provider how to get this working and the data sent to your embedded analytics dashboard!
Read More About AWStats
3. Hotjar
Hotjar is content analytics software that helps businesses discover why visitors engage with their sites. It also gives businesses the feedback they need to improve and customize their content.
Hotjar has four great features: heatmaps, session recordings, surveys, and user feedback.
Read More About Hotjar
4. Clicky
Clicky is the web 2.0 stat monitoring program and has a sleek and clean interface with powerful features. It is easy to use and will provide you with all the real-time stats you could dream of.
Read More About Clicky
5. Site Meter
Site Meter is another popular choice for webmasters. It tracks all kinds of information in real time so you will have a solid idea of who is visiting your site, how they found you, where they came from, what interests them, and so on.
Read More About Site Meter
What website traffic monitoring methods do you use? let us know which are your favorites in the comments and how they help you run your portfolio site!