Figuring out Web Traffic Analyzers

It’s virtually impossible to gauge the effects of your Internet marketing efforts without regularly analyzing your traffic log statistics (or without having good stats at all). Also known as “server stats,” your traffic logs are critical in measuring your web site’s traffic and the nature of that traffic. Unfortunately, to most folks, these stats look like hieroglyphics, and are therefore overlooked or ignored. I’m on a mission to end such ignorance, so on with the lesson!

How to Get Your Traffic Logs

Most good web site hosts will provide traffic log stats as part of their hosting package. If they don’t or only do so for a price, I suggest you shop around.

However, even those that do offer traffic logs don’t necessarily offer you ones that are helpful in analyzing your traffic (sounds crazy, but true).

What you really want and need out of your traffic stats are those that break down the following important components:

For User Sessions:

• Number of unique user sessions
• User session breakdown per day
• Average amount of time spent on site per user

For Web Site Pages:

• Number of page views, broken down by page
• Most popular pages
• Top paths through site
• Top Entrance page
• Top Exit page

For Outside Sources of Traffic:

• Top referring urls
• Top search engines
• Most popular keywords/keyphrases

General:

• Know over what period of time your stats are being run, and how they are aggregated (daily, weekly, monthly?)

Though all of this might sound confusing for the moment, hang in there. At least know that if your stats don’t give you the above, then they’re not providing you with the information that you need. Now, let’s add some meaning to this all.

User Sessions

One of the most critical mistakes made is the overemphasis placed on “hits” versus user sessions. A “hit” is a measurement of every element served on a web page, including graphic images. And since a page can be served up more than once (as in the example of when a user keeps returning to the home page of a site), counting hits would give a very skewed sense of traffic.

In comparison, a user session (even better, “unique user sessions”) is a measurement of one person’s time and activity on your site. It’s truly what you are looking for to gauge the effectiveness of your site.

When analyzing your stats for user sessions, obviously you’re hoping to see growing numbers over time. Try to look for patterns rising on everyday use - is one day of the week or week of the month more popular than others? If so, try to look for a correlation as to why (were you running an ad campaign? Were folks likely to have been away from their computers during a downtime due to a holiday?).

You can also use this analysis to proactively guide your Internet marketing efforts. For example, if you’re running a special promotion like an email campaign, you might want to run the campaign during a traditionally slow time period to see if it has a positive affect on traffic. Don’t forget to check your stats after your campaign to see if it had the effect you had hoped for.

Web Site Pages

“Page Views” are measurements of each time a page is “served” or presented to your eyeballs. If you’re selling advertising space on your web site, this will be an important measurement to those buying from you because it will be WHY they want to buy from you.

You’ll also especially want to know about the most frequently visited pages on your site if you’re conducting ecommerce transactions, because you’ll want to be sure the user is going where you’d like he/she to go. A user’s “path” through your site is exactly what it sounds like - where he/she travels from the start of the session to its end.

Almost all of the time, your home page is going to be the most popular one. Looking beyond the home page is where it gets interesting (and what you find may surprise you!). Are your visitors going to the pages you want them to? Of the pages they are most often frequenting, are you maximizing your sales opportunities?

For example, on your second most popular page, it would be a good idea to remind the visitor of any discounts or special offers you have. And, of course, always have a “call to action” - a blatant command to buy - visible on every page.

“Entrance” and “Exit” pages are where users come in and leave from. Again, both are likely to be your home page, but a site that not only attracts visitors, but also “pulls” them through to other pages is one that is going to be more successful.

When a visitor comes to your home page, he or she often makes a split second decision about whether or not they want to remain. Your goal in marketing your site is to motivate them to not only remain, but to move them through the site, and, in the case of ecommerce, to purchase off your site.

If one of your top exit pages is your Check-Out page, you can estimate that your efforts have been more successful than not. You’ll want to check these figures against your actual sales order figures to see your actual “conversion rate” (the number of visitors who actually become purchasing customers).

Sources of Traffic

This is the exciting piece of the puzzle. It’s also one of the most critical ways you can tell how your marketing efforts are paying off.

A “referring url” is a site from which some sort of hyperlink sends traffic to your site. The most popular forms of referring urls are oftentimes search engines, but some log stats break these out separately.

It’s important to know where these referring urls come from. Hopefully, you recognize the source as a result of some sort of action you’ve taken - submitting your site to a directory, requesting a one-way or reciprocal link, or as a result of an editorial piece you had placed on the site, to name a few. For example, if you click through from this article to my site, doing so will count as one referring url session for Web Ad.vantage.

If you don’t recognize the source of the referring url, CHECK IT OUT!! Perhaps your site has been added to someone else’s because they feel it is a good source of information or merchandise. But you also want to be wary that your site is not being associated with sites of which you do not approve.

When you do find your site newly linked to an unrecognized source that you approve of, it might be a nice idea to drop the webmaster or site editor an email to say thank you. You never know where that tiny effort of goodwill could lead you.

As I mentioned earlier, search engines are often the most popular sources of referring site traffic. It’s good to know both which search engines and what keywords/keyphrases visitors are searching for and finding you by.

This information can both steer any search engine marketing campaigns you might consider (keyword banner buys, sub-section sponsorships or portal promotions).

Also, if you find that the kinds of keywords that are important to you are not those that are driving traffic to your site, consider doing something about it. Either tweak your site and your meta tags to better reflect your critical keywords or work these surprise keywords into your site.

Your end goals should have the traffic coming to your site being:

1) qualified
2) interested in moving forward beyond your home page, and
3) able to find what they came for easily and readily.

Putting It All Together

Now that you know what to look for in your traffic logs, set up a schedule for checking them on a regular basis. If your stats on only compiled once a month, make a note to review them on the first of the month. Otherwise, try to check your stats at least once a week.

Take note of record highs so you can have goals in exceeding them, and if your regular referring urls fall off, take action to recoup them if you can.

If you’re running any kind of direct online marketing campaign, it’s even more important to review your results - daily if possible, because things move so swiftly on the Web.

Finally, don’t be afraid to ask anyone else for their traffic logs as well, particularly if they’re asking you to buy advertising space on their site. They need to be able to substantiate their traffic claims with some hard facts…. at least now you’ll know how to read them.

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