The purpose of analyzing your web site statistics is to look
for trends and to research the success level of your
marketing campaigns. The numbers themselves can be
misleading, as statistical packages count "hits" in different
ways. If someone visits a page on your site doesn't mean
that they read it completely.
The idea with web site statistics, then, is to look for
trends. Instead of looking at the numbers a concrete items,
look at them over time to see if they're increasing or
decreasing. For example, if you do an internet marketing
campaign, then look at your web site statistics to see if the
campaign increased the number of hits to your site.
With that said, here are some numbers you should look at:
Visitor Information
There are three areas that are important to review each month
and during each marketing campaign. The number of unique
visitors will help you to determine whether your site is
receiving more or less visitors each month.
The location tells you what country, and sometimes what
State, the visitors are coming from. This is important if
you're concerned about your global reach to other countries,
or if you've done a marketing campaign in other States. Note
that this is the State of the ISP where they connected to the
Internet. Because AOL is in Virginia, you will have an
inordinate amount of Virginia visitors, even though these
people are actually all over the USA.
An important distinction is the concept of "visitors" versus
"hits". Each person who visits your site is considered a
"visitor". Each time a visitor looks at a page, that page
and its contents are accessed, including the graphics on the
page. As example, say that your home page has two graphics
on it, plus some text. That is considered THREE elements on
the page. When a visitor visits that page once, your
statistics will show ONE visitor and THREE hits.
Time of Day Activity
This area of your statistics helps you to determine which
days of the week have the most activity, and which time of
day is the most active. This can be helpful to know when to
schedule chats and teleclasses. For instance, if Wednesdays
at 3PM are popular times for your site, they may be popular
times for teleclasses. It's important to note here that one
of the most popular times for people to search the web is
weekdays after lunch. (People are at work and having a sugar
low after digesting their lunch and are surfing the net
instead of working.) If this is a popular time for people to
be surfing the net, then this might also be a popular time
for an internet chat on your web site.
Referrals
This section of your statistics will tell you who is sending
people to your web site. It lists which search engines
people use, as well as which keywords or key phrases people
use to find your site. In addition, this section will also
list what other sites are linking from their site to your
site. (When someone links from their site to your site, it's
called an "inbound link" or "incoming link".)
Pages
This section of your statistics will help you to determine
which pages are visited most often, how long people stay on a
page (presumably to read it), and which page people exit your
site from. Again, trends matter here more than the concrete
numbers. Are certain pages more popular than others? Are
people only spending 5 seconds on a page that should take 3
minutes to read?
Error reports
This section tells you where people had problems accessing
your site. If people try to access a certain page and can't,
it will be recorded here. If your site has been unavailable,
you'll see these numbers rise.
For a list of all internet error message numbers and they're
corresponding meaning, check out this website:
http://www.webopedia.com/quick_ref/error.asp
Conclusion
As you can see, there are many number to look at in your
statistics, and many ways to interpret them. If you pay more
attention to trends and problems, and less attention to
actual numbers, you'll be ahead of the game!
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® 2004 Karyn Greenstreet.
Karyn Greenstreet is a Self Employment expert and small
business coach. She shares tips, techniques and strategies
with self-employed people to create and grow their
businesses, stay focused and motivated, and perform at
their peak. Visit her website at www.PassionForBusiness.com
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