How much emphasis do you give stats?

[Pidgin]

Do you work closely with statistics and data collected from your sites (paysites, traffic sites, services etc..) to fine tune it? If so - how close and intesive and what tools do you utilize?

[Mister X]

Your stats are your best friend. I use webtrends for our server stats so I know exactly how many, where they came from and which pages they visited the most. I like to check to see what phrases and keywords they used to get there from a search and then check the rankings for those words/phrases and see if it can be improved. I also check to see if link exchanges are working and if button/banner placements are worth what we are paying for them. At a very basic level you can even use your stats to find broken links by checking the 404s.

It's definitely worth paying extra for good log analysis software if what your host provides doesn't cut the mustard.