Many website owners look at the number of hits and believe that their site is attracting much more traffic than it actually generates. A hit merely indicates the number of files sent to a user when the user lands on the page. So, a single visit to a page which contains ten separate graphic files will show up as ten hits. However, tracking hits over a period of time may indicate whether your website is attracting an increasing or decreasing number of visitors.
Here are some other statistics that can assist in determining the strength and weaknesses of your website and the changes required to attain your company’s marketing and sales objectives.
You can obtain a breakdown of the total visitors to your site by unique visitors and returning visitors. An effective search engine marketing program will enable qualified new visitors (those potentially interested in purchasing your goods or services) to find your site, provide reasons for repeat visitors to come back to your site, and encourage all visitors to advance in the sales cycle (i.e, make a purchase, request additional information, fill out a registration form, etc.).
By examining your visitors’ paths through your site, you can find out the number of pages viewed, the order in which they were viewed, the time spent on each page, any actions taken on particular page (such as clicks on specific links), and the entrance and exit pages. If you examine the data carefully, you might find that patterns emerge, such as a specific landing page that attracts most visitors. Where are you losing your visitors? How sticky is each page? (Stickiness refers to the amount of time that visitors spend on your web page). How many visitors landed on a particular page and then exited immediately? How many visitors exited from the same page? All of these statistics are highly relevant in evaluating the usefulness of your website in your marketing and sales mix.
Another important issue is where your traffic originates. Web analytic software indicates whether your visitor came from a company or an Internet Service Provider such as ATT or Comcast. It can also indicate whether your traffic came from a search engine, which specific search engine, the terms that the visitor used, and where you appear in the results for that search. Sometimes you’ll find some peculiar results. For example, in one search that I found, the number one result for the search for Rob Jones was Rob Smith of Jones & Co.). Although I changed Rob’s last name and the name of the company, you can see how search engines can sometimes return unexpected results, and it’s good to know about these potential deviations when developing your keywords.
Free basic statistics are available from a variety of sources including your web hosting company, Google analytics (www.google.com/analytics), StatCounter (http://www.statcounter.com/), and Gostats (http://www.gostats.com/). Companies such as WebTrends (http://www.webtrends.com/), Index Tools (http://www.indextools.com/) and OneStat (http://www.onestat.com/) sell more robust software that can provide in-depth information. I suggest that you take advantage of trial offers and compare several software applications before you purchase.
While this article includes only a brief overview of the information available from your web analytic statistics, the following books provide more complete pictures of how you can best monitor your website usage.
Actionable Web Analytics: Using Data to Make Smart Business Decisions
Web Analytics For Dummies (For Dummies (Computers))
Competing on Analytics: The New Science of Winning
