Why You Must Know Your Traffic! The Power Of Using Web Analytics

By: Karra Maxim

Who are your customers? Who is coming to your site and how are they getting there? How many of them are purchasing services or products? How do you know?

If you don't use web analytics to track the behavior of traffic to and on your site, then you won't know the answer to any of these questions! If you don't know the answers to these questions, then you won't know if you need to change your advertising sources, upgrade your products or services, or rearrange the content and pages on your site. In order to know what is effective and what isn't, you have to analyze your traffic.

How do you analyze traffic? The best way is through tracking software. Tracking software will let you know some key information about your traffic. One of these is 'bounce,' that is, when a visitor comes to one page on your site and doesn't explore further before leaving. If most of your visitors bounce right off your site, it doesn't matter if you get 10,000 visitors a day. What you need is targeted traffic, visitors who land on your site and stay there, exploring what you have to offer.

You may find that your bounce rate on one page of your site is extremely high, while other pages exhibit a lower rank. Now, not only do you know that this is happening, but you know exactly where it's happening and you can fix that page so that it entices people to stay.

The next thing that your web analytic software can do for you is check out where your visitors are coming from. How many typed in your address directly? How many came through a link on a search engine? How many linked to you through another site? You may be paying for advertising on a site that is creating any traffic for you. Now you know and you can cancel that advertising subscription and save yourself some money. You may see that you are getting a high amount of traffic from another site. Perhaps you will choose to target similar sites for link backs in hopes of getting the same results.

Where do your visitors go once they get to your site? Are they landing on the pages you want them to? Are they filling out your forms or purchasing your inventory? How many are returning and how many come just once? It is with this information that you will be able to use web analytics to further figure out what it is that your site needs in order to convert visitors into buyers. This is called a conversion rate, the percentage of visitors to your site who make a purchase or subscribe, and it is critical in building a successful website for your business. In fact, it is the entire point of web analytics and the reason for carefully and accurately tracking your visitor's activities: to raise your conversion rate as much as possible.

Improving your conversion rate starts with tracking and web analytics. Without the accurate information, you cannot analyze the activities of your visitors. When you analyze the activities of your visitors and compare the results to what you would like to see happen on your site, page by page, then you can make changes to achieve those goals. After you make changes, check your numbers and use web analytics again to figure out what needs to be changed next. In this way, you can stop wasting your time and money on advertising and SEO techniques that aren't drawing or maintaining traffic and stick to what works, pulling targeted traffic and turning customers into repeat customers.

The Importance of Website Stats

One of the best tools you have as a webmaster is your website statistics. The most popular site stats programs are Awstats, Webalizer, and Analog. Usually, they come free of charge and are accessible through your website's control panel provided by your web host.

Awstats gives you valuable information like which file types on your server are getting hit the most, what page is getting the most hits, the number of hits you get from each search engine, search key phrases people are using to find you, and which sites are sending you the most traffic. All of this information is extremely valuable if you are going to have long term success with your website. Analyzing which keywords are bringing in visitors from search engines tells you what's working and what's not. You can then search Google and Yahoo using the key words to find out what your position is for those key words, which is a lot faster than doing random searches looking for your site.You can see how many times visitors are pulling up 404 Document Not Found Pages. This might show you that it's time to customize your 404 page with links back to your site. No sense in losing visitors.

You may be interested in knowing what type of browser your visitors are using. Awstats also tells you that. Another great thing about looking at your stats is that you realize which linking partners are the most valuable. This can help you decide which sites to try and obtain links from in the future. A well placed link can bring you a few hundred extra hits a month. One of the most important things you should be able to see from any statistics program is the amount of pages that the search engine spiders are traveling down your website. If they've stopped visiting your site, it may be an indication that something is very wrong. You don't want to get caught off guard one day and find out your site has completely disappeared from the search engines.