Every time someone visits your site, their information is
recorded. Where they came from, which pages they visited,
where they “entered” and “exited” your site, and so on.
Traffic reporting software, like Google Analytics organises
this data into meaningful patterns and reports.
These traffic reports or website stats reports are one
of the most overlooked tools available to help you understand
how your site is performing and to increasing its performance.
Reading these reports can uncover areas which can be improved
and which may bring you lots of business.
Whichever traffic report software you use, you can find
out what visitors to your site are doing and where they
are coming from. We really recommend you set up Google Analytics.
Here are some of the things to look at.
Traffic
Shows your website's
• unique visitors, that is unique individuals who view your
website within a specified period of time.
• number of visits over a period of time and whether they
are changing. From this you can see whether a particular
advertisement or promotion helped drive people to your site.
• hits - this is a request to the server where your site
is hosted. Each file is counted as a hit so it’s a figure
to be careful with. Each image on a page, for example, equals
a hit so one visit on one page might equal 11 hits!
• visit duration – length of time people are spending on
the site. If they are not staying lone, you may need to
review your content.
Pages and content
You can see here which your most popular pages are. This
can tell you which are important to customers which may
help determine new products for your business.
Entries and exits
Shows where people are entering and exiting your site and
what they look at in between. If many seem to exit from
the same page it might need to be reviewed.
Referrals
Here you can see where your visitors are coming from, such
as search engines or other sites. This can also tell you
search phrases visitors are using to find you. If you understand
what people are searching for it can help you create more
focused content.
Geographic
You can see the domains, countries and IP addresses of your
visitors. So if you are offering accommodation and most
of your visitors are from France, maybe you should consider
including some pages in French on your website!
Although web statistics are not the be all and end all,
they can certainly help you determine the behaviours of
people visiting your site. They are an undervalued tool
for reviewing and improving your website and in turn your
bottom line. You can focus on the pages visitors most use,
research why certain pages are unpopular and both of these,
which will improve your visitor numbers.
If
you'd like help in reviewing your web stats and getting
a plan of action together,
please contact us.
