Users may have been directed to this article from a previous Knowledgebase entry on controlling Volusion store bandwith usage. This article can be found here.
On of the many tools users have access to through their accounts at my.volusion.com is Smarter Stats. Smarter Stats is a 3rd party tool that create comprehensive reports on everything from website traffic to search engine indexing and bandwidth usage.
If you've been directed here from this article, chances are, you are interested in the bandwidth reporting features of Smarter Stat. This article will demonstrate to users how to log into Smarter Stats from within their my.volusion.com account and use this powerful web reporting tool to find vital information regarding their Volusion store.
Getting Started:
First, to access account information through Smarter Stats, users will need to log into their account at my.volusion.com. Once users have logged in, users can obtain information regarding their Volusion store's bandwidth usage from the left-hand navigation menu of their my.volusion.com site, from links contained under the My Store heading particularly from the Plan Usage and Stats links.
Part I - Plan Overview:
Before diving into Smarter Stats, it will be useful for Volusion users to understand how they can access and read account information in regards to their monthly Volusion store plans. This information can be gained from the link under the My Store heading marked, Plan Usage:
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Click on the Plan Usage link under the My Store heading within the my.volusion.com navigation bar.
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At the top of the following table will be a drop-down menu that allows users to choose which store account will be reported in this page. For users with multiple Volusion store accounts, simply choose from the drop-down an account to view plan usage information for.
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Within the next row off the plan usage table, billing information reflecting the current 30 day period for the merchant's Volusion store account. Users can click the Next and Prev buttons within this row to cycle through billing period reports.
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Within this table, for each billing period, users will find a listing for the type of Volusion plan their store resides on (Silver, Gold, Platinum, etc.).
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Within the table, users will find a row marked Bandwidth where users will see 3 columns - Included in Plan, Your Usage and Price.
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For bandwidth, the number listed in the Included in Plan row will report the maximum amount of bandwidth included in the user's monthly Volusion plan. This number will range from 1 to 50 gigabytes per month, depending on plan type.
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The next column will detail the amount of that plan allotment the users has accumulated for the billing period.
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The third and final column will detail the amount the user has to pay in regards to any plan overages. If this column reads Included, it means that no overage costs have been accrued. Typically, users are charged $10 per every gigabyte over their monthly plan allotment. For semi-dedicated plan customers, the charge is $5 per gigabyte over the monthly plan allotment.
Now that users have an overview of how to determine what, if any bandwidth overages their store may be accruing, the following will detail how to tell why store's monthly bandwidth allotment is being used.
Part II - Smarter Stats - Files:
To gain access to the main Smarter Stats page, Volusion users, once logged into their my.volusion.com account can simply click on the Stats link within the My Store header in the navigation menu.
Once logged into the Smarter Stats page, users will see a variety of menus, charts and graphs. Smarter Stats reads information from the web server logs that host Volusion stores and provides web activity information on a per-store basis to the Volusion merchant. The next portion of this article will discuss some of the Smarter Stats reports users will want to use measure bandwidth usage.
Top Files:
A website is essentially a collection of files. Each time a file is accessed through a web browser by a site visitor, it uses some amount of bandwidth. What Volusion merchants will want to watch out for here will be a significantly large amount of file access and bandwidth usage - possibly coming from an image file or PDF that could be causing bandwidth usage to skyrocket.
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Within the Smarter Stats page, look for a table within the left-hand navigation menu labeled, Report Items. This table contains links to all report types contained within the software.
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Within this table, click on the Files folder icon link to expand the list of reports.
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Click on the Files link below to load the Top Files report within the Smarter Stats main page.
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The Top Files report will contain a graph and numerical report of the top 10 most accessed or frequently viewed files within the Volusion store.
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The data within this table is broken down into file access rank, the number of individual hits, the number of unique visits to the file and the total bandwidth used.
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Note – there are certain files within the system that will be very frequently accessed by visitors (such as login.asp, shoppingcart.asp, etc.) that will show in this report.
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It is also important to note that all data reported in Smarter Stats refers to any instance that accesses information from the Volusion store - by customers, administrations or anyone else.
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In terms of safeguarding bandwidth usage, users here will be looking for "anything out of the ordinary" such as a custom file, sizechart.pdf that is using 50 MB of bandwidth or product123's main product photo which is 2 MB in size and has an unusually large number of hits.
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Note that by default, the Top Files report is generated for a 1-week period ending the current date and time the report is run. Users can customize when and how this report is generated using the date and options tools listed on the right hand side of the Smarter Stats interface.
Top Images:
Similar to the Top Files report, the Top Images report within Smarter Stats lists the 10 most accessed image files within the Volusion store and gives their bandwidth usage stats.
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To run this report, simply click on the Files folder icon within the Report Items table of the Smarter Stats page and click the Images link below.
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This table will list the top ten accessed files, their path within the Volusion store, their rank, the number of hits, individual visits and the total amount of bandwidth used in kilobytes (1 MB = 1024 KB).
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Again, this report, by default, is generated for the current week, ending the date the report is run. Users can change settings within the date and options settings to the right of this table in order to change report settings.
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Here, users want to look for image files that are a significant amount of hits and the bandwidth these files are using. If one image within this report seems to have a significantly larger amount of bandwidth usage than the other images within the report, users may want to examin that image (perhaps that image can be simplified, compressed or reduced in resolution to save bandwidth).
Part III - Smarter Stats Traffic:
Smarter Stats doesn't just report information regarding file access within the Volusion store but also overall traffic to and from the site. Again, within the Report Items table, users can find out daily, weekly and monthly information regarding traffic to their Volusion store.
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Within Report Items, click on the Traffic folder icon to expand the list of traffic report options.
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As bandwidth usage and overages are reported on a monthly basis, users will primarily be concerned with the Monthly Totals report. Smarter Stats however can report traffic stats down to the hourly basis and users and welcome to dig as deep into traffic reports as they deem necessary.
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Click on the Monthly Totals link to display the Volusion store's traffic stats for the current month.
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This report will provide graphical and numerical data detailing the total number of page views, hits, unique visits and overall bandwidth usage in kilobytes per month as well as the monthly average (based on a year-to-date basis).
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Users can tailor the report by using the report options listed on the right hand side of this page.
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One thing the users will want to look out for is any large difference between the current, monthly traffic and the to-year average. If a merchant has just wrapped up an advertising campaign for their store or possibly signed up for a security scanning service within the month, they may notice a dramatic increase in monthly traffic versus their year-to-date average.
Summary:
This article merely touches on some of the features of Smarter Stats reports. For further information regarding how to use Smarter Stats in general, users can find links to the Smarter Stats manual and help pages by clicking on the Help link in the upper right corner of the Smarter Stats report page. Users are encouraged to uses Smarter Stats to find information regarding their online store that will better prepare them to sell online.
