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Home > Articles
Analyzing Your Website Traffic
Analysis is a word that scares many people away
however when you factor in the fact that your
business depends on it then you begin to realize
that analyzing your web traffic statistics can be
an invaluable tool for a number of reasons. Let's
explore these "reasons" further.
Almost all web hosting companies provide you with
basic web traffic information that you then have
to interpret and make use of. However, the data you
receive from your hosting company can also be
overwhelming if you don't know how to apply it to
your business strategy and website design. Let's
look at how examining basic data can make a big
difference in your bottom line - the average visitors
that come to your site on a daily, weekly, and
monthly basis will reveal a pattern that you can
use to make your website more profitable than it
already is.
Many new website owners make the mistake of thiking
that the more traffic you see recorded, the better
you can assume your website is doing, this however is
an inaccurate perception. You must also look at the
behavior of your visitors once they come to your
website to accurately gauge the effectiveness of
your website's performance.
A prevalent misconception about what is commonly
referred to as a "hit" or "hits" and what is
really effective, quality traffic to your site
continues to exploit it's way throughout the world
wide web. Hits simply means the number of information
requests received by the server. If you think about
the fact that a hit can simply equate to the number
of graphics per page, you will get an idea of how
overblown the concept of hits can be.
For example, if your homepage has 15 graphics on it,
the server records this as 15 hits, when in reality we
are talking about a single visitor checking out a
single page on your site. As you can see, hits are not
always a useful way to analyze your website traffic.
The more visitors that come to your website, the more
accurate your interpretation will become. The greater
the traffic is to your website, the more precise your
analysis will be of overall trends in visitor behavior.
The smaller the number of visitors, the more a few
anomalous visitors can distort the analysis.
A great way to get more visitors to your website is by
using a website marketing service such as ProClickEstate.
You can list multiple websites and monitor the number of
visitors that you recieve as well as generate additional
visitors with little effort.
The aim is to use the web traffic statistics to figure
out how well or how poorly your site is working for your
visitors. One way to determine this is to find out how
long your visitors spend on your site. If the time
spent is relatively brief, it usually indicates an
underlying problem such as innefective keywords, or
your graphics could be confusing or intimidating,
causing the visitor to exit your site rapidly. Use the
knowledge of how much time visitors are spending on your
site to pinpoint specific problems, and after you fix
those problems, continue to use measure the effectiveness
of your progress.
Additionally, web traffic stats can help you determine
effective and ineffective areas of your website. If you
have a page that you believe is important, but visitors
are exiting it rapidly, that page needs attention. You
could, for example, consider improving the link to this
page by making the link more noticeable and enticing,
or you could improve the look of the page or the ease
that your visitors can access the necessary information
on that page.
Finally, if you notice that users are finding your website
by typing in your company name, break open the champagne!
It means you have achieved a significant level of brand
recognition, and this is a sure sign of more success to
come!
© Mark Brown, All rights reserved.
Submitted on 03/27/2006
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