Analyzing and inspecting your website traffic statistics can be a very helpful tool for a variety of reasons. However, before you take advantage of this particular tool, you must understand how you can interpret the information.
The majority of web hosting companies provides you with basic website traffic information that you simply then need to interpret and make pertinent usage of. Nevertheless, the information you obtain from your host company may be too much to handle unless you learn how to put it to use for your particular business and website.
Let us begin by examining the most basic information – the average website visitors on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis.
These figures would be the most precise measure of the activity of your website. At first glance, it appears that the more traffic you see that is registered, the better you are able to presume your website is performing, however it is deemed an inaccurate perception.
In addition, you need to consider the behavior of your website visitors once they come to your website in order to accurately measure the effectiveness of your site.
Generally there is usually a great false impression about what is popularly known as “hits” and what is genuinely effective, quality traffic to your website. Hits only denotes the amount of information requests received by the server.
If you believe about the fact that the hit can merely equate to the amount of graphics per web page, you will definitely get a solid idea of exactly how overblown the idea of hits can be. For instance, if your homepage has fifteen graphics on it, the server records this as fifteen hits, when in actuality we are referring to just one visitor looking at a single page on your website. As you can tell, hits are certainly not beneficial in analyzing your website traffic.
The more visitors that come to your website, the more precise your interpretation can become. The greater the traffic is to your website, the more accurate your analysis is going to be regarding the overall trends in visitor behavior. The smaller the amount of visitors, the anomalous can more easily distort the analysis.
The goal is to use the website traffic statistics to find out exactly how effectively or how badly your site is working for your visitors.
A good way to know for sure is to discover the length of time on average your visitors spend on your site. In the event the time spent is pretty quick, it typically signifies an underlying problem.
Then the challenge will be to find out exactly what that problem is.
Maybe your keywords and phrases tend to be directing the wrong type of visitors to your website, or perhaps your graphics are perplexing or daunting, causing the visitors to leave quickly.
Make use of the knowledge of the amount of time visitors are spending on your website to figure out specific problems, and as soon as you resolve those problems, continue using the time spent as a gauge of how successful your resolve has been.
In addition, website traffic statistics can assist you in determining the effective and ineffective areas of your website. If you have a webpage that you consider is very important, yet visitors tend to leave it quickly, that web page requires attention.
You may, for instance, take into account in improve the link to this page by making the link much more visible and enticing, or you could enhance the appearance of the actual web page or the ease that your visitors can easily gain access to the necessary information on that web page.
In case, on the other hand, you observe that website visitors tend to be spending considerable time on pages that you feel are much less important, you might take into account moving some of your sales copy and marketing concentration to that particular web page.
As you have seen, these statistics will certainly uncover vital information about the effectiveness of individual web pages, and visitor behavior and motivation. This is vital information to just about any successful Internet marketing campaign.
Your website without doubt has exit web pages, for instance a final order or contact page. This is the page from which you could expect your visitor to leave quickly. However, don’t assume that all visitors to your website will find precisely what he or she is searching for, therefore statistics may show you a variety of exit pages. In the event that a substantial percentage of visitors are leaving your website on a page not created for that purpose, you have to look closely at that specific web page in order to discover exactly what the problem is.
As soon as you figure out probable weak points on that web page, minimal modifications in content or graphic may have a tremendous effect on keeping visitors moving through your website as opposed to leaving at the wrong web page.
Once you have analyzed your visitor statistics, you are ready to turn to your keywords and phrases. Observe if there are specific keywords that leads a specific type of visitor to your site. The more targeted the visitor – which means that they come across what they are trying to find on your site, and even better, fill out your contact form or buy something – the more beneficial that keyword is.
Nevertheless, if you discover numerous visitors are now being directed – or should i point our misdirected – to your website by a specific keyword or phrase, that keyword calls for adjustment. Keywords and phrases are essential in delivering high quality visitors to your website who will be ready to do business with you. Close analysis of the keywords and phrases that your visitors are utilizing to locate your site will give you an important understanding of the needs and motivations of your visitors.
Last but not least, if you see that users are discovering your website by simply typing in your company name, break open the champagne! It indicates you have attained a significant level of brand reputation, and it is a positive indication of burgeoning accomplishment.
Author: Scott McDonald
Image Courtesy of Explore Posterous
