RSS Feed for Traffic AnalysisTraffic Analysis

The Science Of Analyzing Website Traffic And Statistics

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 on average your visitors spend on your site. If the time spent is relatively brief, it usually indicates an underlying problem. Then the challenge is to figure out what that problem is.

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.

Analyzing your web traffic statistics can be an invaluable tool for a number of different reasons. But before you can make full use of this tool, you need to understand how to interpret the data.

Most web hosting companies will provide you with basic web traffic information that you then have to interpret and make pertinent use of. However, the data you receive from your host company can be overwhelming if you don’t understand how to apply it to your particular business and website. Let’s start by examining the most basic data - the average visitors to your site on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis.

These figures are the most accurate measure of your website’s activity. It would appear on the surface that the more traffic you see recorded, the better you can assume your website is doing, but this 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 site.

There is often a great misconception about what is commonly known as “hits” and what is really effective, quality traffic to your site. 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 useful in analyzing 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.

It could be that your keywords are directing the wrong type of visitors to your website, or that your graphics are confusing or intimidating, causing the visitor to exit 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 time spent as a gauge of how effective your fix has been.

If, on the other hand, you notice that visitors are spending a lot of time on pages that you think are less important, you might consider moving some of your sales copy and marketing focus to that particular page.

As you can see, these statistics will reveal vital information about the effectiveness of individual pages,and visitor habits and motivation. This is essential information to any successful Internet marketing campaign.

Your website undoubtedly has exit pages, such as a final order or contact form. This is a page you can expect your visitor to exit rapidly. However, not every visitor to your site is going to find exactly what he or she is looking for, so statistics may show you a number of different exit pages. This is normal unless you notice a exit trend on a particular page that is not intended as an exit page. In the case that a significant percentage of visitors are exiting your website on a page not designed for that purpose, you must closely examine that particular page to discern what the problem is. Once you pinpoint potential weaknesses on that page, minor modifications in content or graphic may have a significant impact on the keeping visitors moving through your site instead of exiting at the wrong page.

After you have analyzed your visitor statistics, it’s time to turn to your keywords and phrases. Notice if particular keywords are directing a specific type of visitor to your site. The more targeted the visitor - meaning that they find what they are looking for on your site, and even better, fill out your contact form or make a purchase - the more valuable that keyword is.

However, if you find a large number of visitors are being directed - or should I say misdirected - to your site by a particular keyword or phrase, that keyword demands adjustment. Keywords are vital to bringing quality visitors to your site who are ready to do business with you. Close analysis of the keywords your visitors are using to find your site will give you a vital understanding of your visitor’s needs and motivations.

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 burgeoning success.

Evaulating Web Site Performance Can Only Happen If You Have Set Goals

If you don’t know what you want your site to accomplish, it will most likely fail to accomplish anything. Without goals to guide you in developing and monitoring your website, all your site will be is an online
announcement that you are in business.

Setting up a website is the very first step of an Internet marketing campaign, and the success or failure of your site depends greatly on how specifically you have defined your website goals.

However, just because hoards of people have passed through your gates does not mean your site is successful. Usually, you want those visitors to actually do something there. It is equally important to monitor the number of visitors to your site who made a purchase. This figure is called the site conversion rate, and it is an essential element of the efficacy of your website.

If you expect your site to stimulate some form of action, whether it is visitors filling out a form so a
representative can contact them, or purchasing a product, there are steps you can take to insure that your website is functioning at peak efficiency. One of the first indicators of how well your site is working for you is finding out the number of visitors in a given period of time. A good baseline measurement is a month in which you haven’t been doing any unusual offline promotional activities.

To find the site conversion rate, take the number of visitors per month and figure out the percentage of them
that actually performed the action your site is set up for. For example, if you had 2,000 hits to your site, but only 25 of them purchased your product, your site conversion rate equals 1.25%. To get this figure, take your number of visitors and divide that figure by the number of visitors who made a purchase. Then divide that result by 100.

If your website is set-up to get visitors to fill out a form, make sure to then figure out what the difference is between your site conversion rate and your sales conversion rate. This is because not everyone who fills out your form will actually become your customer. However, whether your site is set-up to sell a service or product, or to get the visitor to fill out a form, the site conversion rate will measure the success or failure of your website whenever you make changes to the site.

You may find that you need to implement some additional marketing strategies if you find that traffic to your site is extremely low. There are several effective methods to improve the flow of traffic to your website, particularly launching a search engine optimization campaign. This campaign is targeted at increasing your position in search engine results so that consumers can find your pages faster and easier. You can either research the steps you need to take to improve your search engine rankings, or employ a search engine optimization company to do the work for you. In either case, after your have improved your search engine
positions, make sure you keep on top of them by regular monitoring and adjusting of your efforts to maintain high positions.

Another factor to examine is how easy it is for a visitor to your website to accomplish the action the site is set-up for. For example, if your goal is for the visitor to fill out a form, is this form easily accessible, or does the visitor have to go through four levels to get to it? If it’s too difficult to get to, the customer may just throw in the towel and move on to another site. Make sure your buttons are highly visible, and the path to your form or ordering page quickly accessible.

Finally, have a professional evaluate the copy on your website. The goal is, of course, to get your visitor to
make a purchase or fill out your form. Website copy must be specifically geared to your online campaign and not just a cut and paste job from your company brochure. The right copy can make the difference between profit and loss in your online campaign.

Getting Your Visitors To Market For You

Wouldn’t it be nice if everyone who visited your website then went and brought two or three other people to your site just to show them how awesome it is? If you had just five happy clients who brought back 2 friends a piece, you would you watch your business grow by 150% in just that day. Imagine if everyone did that. Your website would be one of the fastest growing sites on the internet today. Of course, you’re thinking, that would be nice but it just doesn’t work that way. Perhaps not everyone will bring a friend or two along. But are you even giving them the option?

You want to make sure that you are using every available resource to help your website grow and attract more people. Using something known as the “Tell a Friend” script can help bring an increased amount of targeted traffic to your website.

We’ve all been on those websites that offer us the option to email something to a friend. That is just one version of the “Tell a Friend” script. When we email a website to our friends, we are essentially inviting them to enjoy or make us of something that we enjoyed or found useful. Making sure that your clients have the same option is just one more step in creating good marketing skills. This is also referred to as viral marketing.

As human nature has proven over and over again, we are social creatures with a habit of sharing information with each other. Whenever we run into something that we find valuable we often share it with those we are closest to or those who we believe would get the most from the sharing of information. Viral marketing is based on this characteristic borne in human nature. We like to share and talk and be the informative ones. Offering some really fabulous deals and even offering bonus incentives for those who share your site with a lot of friends can help increase your market visibility and attract the high quality customer.

Fortunately, viral marketing can be done with very little out of pocket expenses and has been proven to help bring friend together in search of common interests. It is really a great win-win situation.

The “Tell a Friend” script is the simplest form of viral marketing available today. It allows any user to click the link and let someone they know that there is a really great website out there that is just perfect for their needs. Since the link is obvious and visible, the user does not have to come up with idea on their own but is gently reminded that they should tell their friends. Having a high level of visibility without being obnoxious is really simple. If you are unsure, you can check out the links on other websites to help determine what works well and what doesn’t.

Most of the “Tell a Friend” scripts use a very simple email form which includes registering both email addresses for the purposes of receiving information. Because the user sent the initial information and signed up the friend, you can now send emails to both of them and nothing is considered spam. You now also have two more email addresses and names for your opt-in email list.

The email that the user sends to a friend is usually either text or video based and can easily present a totally new potential client with all the fabulous ins and outs of your website, what it can do for them, and why it is so special.

You don’t have to be a genius programmer to get a hold of one of these fabulous little marketing tools. You can actually just add the script it via copy and paste. Go to any search engine and type in the keyword phrase “tell a friend script” and you will find that there are plenty to choose from and that they are usually free.

While there are innumerable benefits to using this type of viral marketing, don’t forget that not every visitor is going to use this feature and not everyone who receives the email is going to be interested in visiting your website. But over time you can make adjustments to your message, draw in a larger crowd, and of course, tweak your delivery so that you are presenting them with the absolute best message possible. It’s okay to allow viral marketing to get off the ground slowly, but over time, you will notice a traffic difference.

What is Search Marketing?

If you run a business that operates on the Web you’ve probably heard that you need to do some search marketing but you might not know what search engine marketing is. Search marketing is the process of getting listed higher on search engine result pages so that your website is more visible to potential customers.

Studies have shown that people are most likely to click on the top three or five sites listed on search engine result pages and probably will never look at the other pages that are listed. So you need to get your site listed on those pages in order to increase web site traffic that you need to really be successful. You can use search engine marketing to get your website listed higher on search engine result pages and get more customers.

Traditionally there are three different ways that you can use search marketing to get a better place on the search engine result pages. You can use SEO content or search engine optimization to make your site show up higher on the search engine result page or you can use ad placement or ad inclusion in search marketing. Paid placement ads are also known as pay-per-click ads and paid inclusion ads work in a similar fashion although they are different than paid placement ads. Most businesses choose to use the search engine optimization method.

In order to get great results when using search engine optimization to increase your search result page status you need to make sure that the SEO content you put up on the website is original and uses the keywords or key phrases that are related to your business the right number of times. If you use the keywords too much then the search engines will think you are stacking your webpage with copied content and your site will be dropped to the bottom of the list. If the keywords or key phrases are used too little then your page will end up not being on the first page of search engine result pages and if your business isn’t listed on the first page you might as well give up because chances are very high that no one will see you website.

Search engine marketing might seem sort of difficult to figure out at first but it’s just a necessary part of doing business on the Web. It would be nice if your next YouTube video went viral and millions of people found your website but unfortunately you can’t count on that.

But if you learn more about search marketing and use a lot of search marketing to drive customers to your website you’ll see you a large increase in the amount of traffic that your website gets. And since the main thing that you need to be successful on the Web is to increase web site traffic, if you can successfully use search marketing you will start to see great results for your business in no time. Search Engine Marketing is really the best way to get noticed on the Web.

Marketing For The Unidentified Visitors

Marketing for the anonymous visitors is simply changing the contents of the site based on the interests and taste of the visitor. This will make the information relevant to the visitor of the site. Each user will have metadata attached which acts in a similar way to that of the human sensory nerves. This will give an idea of reaction to a person’s approach.

Supplemental data contain information like the IP address, location, browser languages and information about domain extensions. In addition to this it also contains the connection speed of the internet, search keyword, reference URL screen resolution and operating system.

Geographical location tells about the approximate address of the visitor. So that information like climate, temperature, local happening, and time can be displayed accurately.

Internet protocol address tells us about the specific Internet service. If the connection is from an Internet provider then the web page displays the speed of the connection. But if it is related to a precise company the website displays the name and logo of the company.

A web page can be arranged in diverse languages. By examining the browser language, the visitor gets to see a web page in his own mother tongue so that it is easy for him to understand. He/she will be very comfortable with such a page.

Different establishments and different spheres have unlike domain extensions. For example a website with a .gov extension is a government website and a .edu means it is an educational site. Thus the contents of the site can be altered according to the needs of the visitors.

Depending on the speed of the net connection the size of the multimedia downloads can also be controlled and managed. But if the speed is low then lowest resolution downloads will be utilized and this will not interfere with the normal working of the computer.

The requirements of different operating systems are different and their functionality also different operating systems have different requirements and their functionality also changes. Downloadable software provided by some websites is sometimes not compatible with the kind of operating system. These restrictions can be found out without disrupting the user.

SEO technique can be utilized to solve this problem. Linking data to a specific keyword, which is displayed automatically making the visitor feel that his query was dealt with effectively, does this.

Referring URL helps the sponsor to compare data with that of the previous page and bring it on the present page. Thus there is an increase in the competition between the websites; the present website will try to prove to be better than the previous website.

If the visitor is surfing the Internet with his hand held device or mobile, the content of the website is trimmed to fit the screen resolution of the device. If the amount of data that is viewed on a normal monitor is displayed over the hand held device, the data will overlap each other and the content will not be readable.