Article printed from SiteProNews: http://www.sitepronews.com
  HTML version available at: http://www.sitepronews.com/archives.html

Making Sense Of Website Statistics
By Paul J Coulter (c) 2007

Every website owner wants lots of traffic directed to their
website, but this can sometimes involve spending a lot of time
and money. Fortunately, most website owners can increase their
return on investment simply by paying closer attention to their
website log files. Most website hosting companies have special
software installed that will process these website log files
and display the information in an easy to read format. From
this information website owners can get an understanding as to
how many people are visiting the website, where the visitors
are coming from, where they are entering and exiting the
website, the average number of page views per visit, and many
more interesting facts. These statistics will allow you to
better analyze the effectiveness of promotional campaigns and
give you some insight as to how you can tweak your website to
increase your return on investment.

"Hits" Explained

There seems to be some confusion regarding the terms used to
describe website visitor traffic. We usually hear website
owners speak in terms of "hits" to their website. Hits don't
accurately describe the number of visitors viewing the website
– they are actually just any sort of HTTP request made to
your server. Not only are requests made for website pages, but
also for all the images and other files associated with viewing
a single page. Therefore, one page view could actually result in
dozens of hits, and, if a single user visits many pages on your
website, this visit could generate hundreds or even thousands
of hits. This can excite some website owners, but this number
is not a reliable indictor of how many people have actually
visited the website.

The term that website owners want to focus on is the amount of
unique impressions that are generated by their website. A
unique impression will measure the number of actual people
visiting the website based on their IP address, browser, and
operating system. No matter how many "hits" a visitor registers
on your website, the server will record the session as one
unique visit. Thus, the number of unique visits gives us a much
better idea of the amount of traffic the website is generating.

What to Look for When Analyzing Website Traffic

Number of Unique Visitors: We've already determined that the
best measure of true website traffic is the number of unique
visitors. What we want to look for is a trend in the average
number of unique visitors. On a day to day basis, there may be
a good amount of volatility in the number of unique visitors,
but we want to pay attention to the trend of the average number
of visitors per month. Optimally, we'd like to have the number
increase on a monthly basis.

Entry Page Statistics: From these statistics we can learn which
page people are using to enter your website. Most visitors will
enter from your home page, but you may notice that up to 50% of
your website traffic originates from a page other than your home
page. It's important that your website have an easy to use
navigation structure to ensure that visitors can find the
information they are looking for, even if they don't enter
through your website's main page.

Bounce Rate: The bounce rate can be defined as the percentage
of people who visit your website and immediately leave. Don't
get worried if your bounce rate is high – most websites have a
bounce rate of about 50% or so. If the bounce rate is unusually
high, you can experiment with your website to try and retain
more visitors. Maybe you need more enticing graphics, less
text, faster loading pages, or a more engaging design.

Exit Page Statistics: These statistics will show you where
people are leaving your website. When you know which page is
losing the bulk of your website's visitors you can experiment
with some changes in an attempt to retain more visitors.

Average Time & Page Views Per Visit: Website visitors are very
goal oriented and task driven. Upon visiting your website, most
visitors will merely scan the page to quickly determine whether
or not it contains the information they are searching for. By
analyzing the average amount of time spent on your website and
the average number of page views per visit, you can determine
how engaging your website's content is. The key to retaining
visitors and increasing the number of page views is to have
relevant and interesting information on your website. Remember –
content is king!

Top Referring URLs: This statistic lets you know where the bulk
of your website's traffic is coming from. This is important if
you're pursuing a website marketing campaign or search engine
optimization campaign because you can easily judge the
campaign's effectiveness by looking to see how many visitors
each marketing method is generating.

Top Search Words & Phrases: This information will let you know
which keywords and phrases visitors are searching for in Google
and the other search engines in order to find your website. With
this information you can gauge the effectiveness of a search
engine optimization campaign, or get an idea of how your
website's keyword density should be altered to position it for
the keywords and phrases that you're targeting.

Browsers, Platforms & Screen Sizes: This information gives us
some insight as to the type of software and hardware your
visitors are using. You should ensure that your website looks
the same across all browsers and operating systems. In
addition, you must pay attention to the screen size and
resolution in which your visitors are viewing your website. The
goal is to ensure that no visitor has to resort to the
horizontal scrolling bar to view your website – this is a major
turnoff for most people.

Country of Origin: A good website stats program will also let
you know the geographic region of your website's visitors. This
is important if your website only has appeal in a particular
region. For instance, if you own a retail store that caters to
Southwestern Ontario and you notice that 90% of your website
traffic is coming from the U.S., then it can easily be
determined that you need to re-think your online marketing
strategy.

The goal of website traffic analysis is to assess how well or
how poorly your website is working for your visitors. From
these statistics you can figure out what the problem is and try
out some possible solutions. The problem often lies in the
website's visual appearance, layout, navigation structure, or
keyword optimization. When making modifications to your website
in order to remedy these problems, it's best to only make minor
and gradual adjustments, and then assess the progress over the
next month or so to truly understand if your changes were for
the better. Also, remember that sites with a greater number of
visitors will have more accurate web statistics. Sites with
smaller numbers of visitors are more prone to have their
averages thrown off by a few anomalous visitors.
================================================================
Paul Coulter owns and operates a Toronto Website Design company
that specializes in search engine optimization (SEO).
http://www.ekonline.com/
================================================================

Copyright © 2007 Jayde Online, Inc.  All Rights Reserved.

SiteProNews is a registered service mark of Jayde Online, Inc.