Using Your Web Site Traffic Stats to Your Advantage

Researching your web site traffic stats can be invaluable for several reasons but you need to understand how to analyze them to get the most out of them.

Your web hosting company should provide you with some form of web site traffic information, or you might prefer to use Google Analytics which is very user-friendly. The data you get from your hosting company's numbers can be overwhelming to interpret, with Google's being somewhat easier, but if you don't understand how to use it in relation to your particular business and web site - it is useless data.

Start by looking at the average number of visitors to your site on a daily, weekly, and monthly rate. It would at first glance seem that the more traffic you see listed the better your web site is doing, but this is an inaccurate observation. You also need to look at the behavior of your visitors once they come to your web site to correctly gauge how effective your site really is at leading and converting visitors.

In the old days of web site traffic analysis people used to talk about "hits" all the time. Hits are not a good way to assess whether your web site is well visited and this is why: If your home page has twenty images on it your server will show you having twenty hits. But in reality those twenty hits are just a single visitor looking at one page on your site. So, assume hits are not useful when analyzing your website traffic.

Another thing to take into account is that increased web site traffic means your data will be more accurate, as a lower number of visitors can easily skew your data so you can misrepresent your analysis.

Web site traffic stats can help you to see which parts of your web site are working and which are not. You will easily be able to see which pages people are using to exit away from your site. Some of your site's pages may be causing people to leave prematurely without leaving through your designated exit pages. You can also see which pages are successful and if they are not the ones with your sales copy on them, move your text to those pages to help improve your sales.

If your exit pages are never being used, with visitors leaving before reaching them, you need to fully analyze all the pages on your site to see what links people are following when they leave. You may find that you haven't successfully laid out a trail for visitors to follow which takes them to where you can close the sale and they make a purchase.

In closing, web site traffic statistics reveal crucial information about your site's ability to turn visitors into customers which is important information for any successful Internet marketing campaign.