Don't Neglect your Web Statistics

What your website's statistics can reveal about your website.

One of the best things you can do for your online business is study your website statistics. 

Your web site stats will give you information about how many people visit your website, when they come, how they found your website, how long they remain on your site, what pages they visit, what keywords they used to find your pages and where they go after they visit your site.

This information is important because it can help you to determine whether your site if fulfilling your viewers expectations. 

For example if you're getting lots of viewers but few sales then your sales message probably needs a little pick-me-up. You're probably not getting your message across in a compelling and convincing way.

Perhaps your viewers are going to your order form but not completing the sale. This may be a clue that your order form or your ordering process has a flaw.

Take a look at how long visitors are staying on your site.  If they click off in 30 seconds you may want to offer more useful information.

You should be able to know how many unique visitors you get a month. 

This is very useful in determining if your site is gaining popularity from month to month or if it's just stagnating.

For example, take the number of visitors you get in a day or a month. Now it's important to note the difference between a hit and a unique visitor.  A 'hit' is not a single visitor like most people may think. Hits are more like files, so for example if a page on your site had 5 pictures on it, that accounts for 5 hits. So the number of hits doesn't really say much for the activity on your site.  If the same visitor goes to another page with 3 pictures or files on it that qualifies for another 3 hits, so one visitor could mean at least 8 hits to your website. Not really very accurate.

Now the number of unique visitors is much more accurate for how much traffic you get.  One visitor on your site qualifies as one visit no matter how many pages they go to.

Know which pages are viewed the most.

This can help you determine if the pages you think are important or you expect to bring revenue are really getting visited. If these pages are not getting viewed then this is a clue that you may have to do something to help funnel them in that direction.

Know where your visitors are coming from

This is particularly useful if you make search engine submissions, you'll be able to know if your  submissions were successful. Whatever website issues or concerns you may have your web logs are the best place to turn for information and brain storming resolutions. 

- Creating Custom error pages. I highly recommend creating a custom error page for your site when you can.  It's just one page that you can create to help your viewers find what they are looking for.  For example, if a person finds your site from a page that may have been deleted or changed, they will automatically get the '404 error page' which you set up any way to want to give your viewer additional information about your site.  This way they'll get a page on your site instead of them getting a 'page not found' from their internet browser.

Keep in mind that many times just one small website change can make a big difference in your traffic and ultimately your sales.

Most web hosting providers will provide you with website statistics, however, if they don't, try using Google Analytics. They provide tons of good site statistics and they are free to use.