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what Do Your Site Statistics Mean, Anyway?
by: Karyn Greenstreet
What Do Your
Site Statistics Mean, Anyway?
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!
About The Author
© 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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