The web statistics and analytics available to web site owners to track web visitors is often an underutilized tool. While everyone wants access to their web stats, they don't usually know what to do with the information, nor do they seek assistance in analyzing the data.
Your Webmaster should be able to tell you what the stats mean, but the analysis needs to be done by someone with some web marketing experience. Having said that, there are some important things any web site owner looking at their stats should know:
Ever hear someone talking, perhaps bragging, about how many "hits" their web site got last week, last month or last year? Don't be too impressed, more than likely they're misinformed. They're just passing along the misinformation to you because it sounds really good.
"Hits" is not a measure of how many people have visited your site! "Hits" actually refers to how many files from your web site have been opened in the course of viewing pages on your site. In the case of just one single page of your web site being viewed, multiple files will be opened. At the minimum, the HTML page itself counts as one file, as does every image on the page. So if you have a web page with 3 images, you get 4 hits!
When you start counting the CSS style sheet, any external JavaScript files, background images etc. the number can be much, much higher. On my home page alone, there are 29 files opened when you view the page.
The number of hits on my home page would be 29 times the number of visits. You can see why it's not accurate to use this number to talk about number of visitors.
The statistic to check is visits, visitors and unique visitors. That number will tell you how many real people saw your site. Most stats programs don't count the search engine spiders as visitors, although it will count you every time you visit your site.
Another statistic to look closely at is the entrance and exit pages. This will tell you, for each page in your site, the percentage of visitors who entered through that page, and how many exited from there. This can be valuable information for working your marketing strategies.
Bounce Rates will be reported in many analytics programs. This tells you that a visitor came to your site through a certain page, then "bounced" right back out of it. What happens is that your site came up in the search engines for a certain term, the visitor clicked on your site link in the results, and decided instantly that the page was not what they were looking for. We've all done this when searching the web. Do take a look at your keywords, description and content to be sure you're not unwittingly promoting the page as something it's not.
After you get past Bounce Rates, check the statistic that tells you how long is spent on each page. Interested visitors will spend more time on your site. If you're getting interested traffic, but not sales, you need to tweak the content to make the conversion.
Some analytics will give the navigation flow from entrance to exit as well. Why is this valuable? Well, for example if visitors are entering through your home page, then most of them go to an About Us page, and then exit, you'll need to do some work on the Home page to get visitors to go to your product or services page. You'll also need to look at the About Us page and figure out how to convert that traffic to sales, or get them to go to your products and services instead of leaving.
The Referring Sites and Referring Search Engines stats will tell you where your visitors are coming to your site from. The sites that refer to yours are giving you an incoming link (an important ingredient in search engine rankings). Watch this stat to see which incoming links are converting into sales. Watch the Referring Search Engines to see which ones are doing well, and which ones you need to pay more attention to.
Your stats should also tell you what keyphrases are being used to find your site. You'll see which ones are working the way you intend. This one is usually an eye opener for many web site owners who haven't worked with a web marketer. It may surprise you what keyphrases you get ranked highest for in the search engines, and find they're not the ones you'd expect. This gives you good insight into how the search engines see your site and its content.
Consider all the statistics and analytics as gold you've mined from your site visitors. Getting the gold out of the ground is only half the battle. You have to know how to convert it to something you can use. All your statistics and analytics are just numbers until you put them to use to improve your web site and produce sales. Keep in mind this will not be a one-time challenge, but an on-going endeavor to keep your site visible and working for you.
Your Webmaster should be able to tell you what the stats mean, but the analysis needs to be done by someone with some web marketing experience. Having said that, there are some important things any web site owner looking at their stats should know:
Ever hear someone talking, perhaps bragging, about how many "hits" their web site got last week, last month or last year? Don't be too impressed, more than likely they're misinformed. They're just passing along the misinformation to you because it sounds really good.
"Hits" is not a measure of how many people have visited your site! "Hits" actually refers to how many files from your web site have been opened in the course of viewing pages on your site. In the case of just one single page of your web site being viewed, multiple files will be opened. At the minimum, the HTML page itself counts as one file, as does every image on the page. So if you have a web page with 3 images, you get 4 hits!
When you start counting the CSS style sheet, any external JavaScript files, background images etc. the number can be much, much higher. On my home page alone, there are 29 files opened when you view the page.
The number of hits on my home page would be 29 times the number of visits. You can see why it's not accurate to use this number to talk about number of visitors.
The statistic to check is visits, visitors and unique visitors. That number will tell you how many real people saw your site. Most stats programs don't count the search engine spiders as visitors, although it will count you every time you visit your site.
Another statistic to look closely at is the entrance and exit pages. This will tell you, for each page in your site, the percentage of visitors who entered through that page, and how many exited from there. This can be valuable information for working your marketing strategies.
Bounce Rates will be reported in many analytics programs. This tells you that a visitor came to your site through a certain page, then "bounced" right back out of it. What happens is that your site came up in the search engines for a certain term, the visitor clicked on your site link in the results, and decided instantly that the page was not what they were looking for. We've all done this when searching the web. Do take a look at your keywords, description and content to be sure you're not unwittingly promoting the page as something it's not.
After you get past Bounce Rates, check the statistic that tells you how long is spent on each page. Interested visitors will spend more time on your site. If you're getting interested traffic, but not sales, you need to tweak the content to make the conversion.
Some analytics will give the navigation flow from entrance to exit as well. Why is this valuable? Well, for example if visitors are entering through your home page, then most of them go to an About Us page, and then exit, you'll need to do some work on the Home page to get visitors to go to your product or services page. You'll also need to look at the About Us page and figure out how to convert that traffic to sales, or get them to go to your products and services instead of leaving.
The Referring Sites and Referring Search Engines stats will tell you where your visitors are coming to your site from. The sites that refer to yours are giving you an incoming link (an important ingredient in search engine rankings). Watch this stat to see which incoming links are converting into sales. Watch the Referring Search Engines to see which ones are doing well, and which ones you need to pay more attention to.
Your stats should also tell you what keyphrases are being used to find your site. You'll see which ones are working the way you intend. This one is usually an eye opener for many web site owners who haven't worked with a web marketer. It may surprise you what keyphrases you get ranked highest for in the search engines, and find they're not the ones you'd expect. This gives you good insight into how the search engines see your site and its content.
Consider all the statistics and analytics as gold you've mined from your site visitors. Getting the gold out of the ground is only half the battle. You have to know how to convert it to something you can use. All your statistics and analytics are just numbers until you put them to use to improve your web site and produce sales. Keep in mind this will not be a one-time challenge, but an on-going endeavor to keep your site visible and working for you.
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