What Site Traffic Reports Reveal to the Marketer

“Traffic,” the commonly used collective term to describe web site visitors, is often the first thing an online company looks to improve upon. “We want to increase traffic” seems to be the popular tune we hear from marketing executives who contact us. But probe a little further and we discover that the average web site publisher knows little about their site traffic other than that they do (or do not) get any.

When studied, web site traffic can reveal an awful lot about your site. For example, how well your intent is actually manifested in the actions of your visitors, what paths your visitors most commonly navigate, how much other sites and search engines impact your visitor counts, and which days of the week and times of day (and countries, too) are most popular for traffic. This kind of information can be readily available and pretty easy for you to use if you have the right tools. You just have to know what to look for and how to interpret the information.

To get a handle on this type of data you need a traffic reporting tool. There is code on every page that sends the central server raw data on the site’s visitors. The tool then tabulates the data and presents it in an easy-to-read report. Depending upon the type of tool employed, data is aggregated daily, weekly, monthly, or in real-time. Real-time reporting tools make instant analysis of campaign data possible. Some traffic tools are web-based, while others reside on your host server.

Web Site Stats You Need to Monitor

Most good traffic reporting tools actually provide more data than you’ll ever need. If you’re new to this topic, we figured we’d give you a primer on a few crucial stats you should focus on:

• Unique User Sessions - a unique user session measures one person’s time and activity on your site. It’s actually much more appropriate to talk about traffic in terms of “user sessions” (or “visitors”) than “hits” because hits are really not tied in to visitors at all (hits are a measurement of how many files or graphics are downloaded on a web page, and one page alone can deliver many hits). Pay attention to the total number of unique user sessions per day/week/month and how much time each user spends on your site. You probably want to grow these figures steadily over time.

   

• Page Views - measures how many pages downloaded by visitors to your site. Keep an eye on the overall number of page views (high page view to visitor ratios means that people are going to lots of places on your site, and probably spending a good amount of time there), most (and least) popular pages (are these the pages where *you’d* like your visitors to be?), top entrance pages (where people enter the site; most likely the home page) and exit pages (where people leave the site) – if the two of these are the same, people are probably not sticking around your site too long.

   

• Referring Sites - can be broken out by search engines, domains, and specific URLs and indicates which sites are sending visitors to your site. If you don’t take direct action to market your site, most likely your top referrers will be search engines. But active site marketing efforts like affiliate partnerships, linking activities, and online public relations will be reflected in these stats as well. If your stats show a short list of referring sites or little to no search engine referrals, you probably want to get on the stick and do some online marketing work.

   

Using Traffic Log Analysis

Now that you have a handle on the traffic reporting stats to focus on, you can use this information to help your marketing efforts:

• Increase revenues - by learning which pages on your site are the most trafficked you can increase revenues by putting stronger and more direct calls to action (”Buy now” or “Special Offer” for example) on those pages. You can also place affiliate links on these pages and generate secondary revenue by selling or promoting someone else’s products or services.

   

• Evaluate success (or failure) of marketing programs - if you have a marketing or ad campaign on a particular site, referring site information will tell you how many visitors that site is sending you. This information can corroborate ad tracking statistics as well. You can also gauge your search engine optimization efforts by measuring the increased number of referrals from search engines.

   

• Confirm the suitability of an online ad campaign being pitched to you by zealous media reps by demanding to see their traffic stats. Pay particular attention to their unique visitors and page view counts.

   

• Streamline your site - if no one ever visits certain pages on your site, why keep them? Traffic logs can help turn your site into a lean, mean, selling machine. Instead, focus on and build out from those sections of your site that visitors find interesting.

   

Traffic Reporting Options

Every single site on the Web should have a traffic reporting tool that at the very least provides the information we’ve talked about in this tip. There are many solutions from companies like Hitbox and WebTrends to low-cost or freebies like FreeStats, Extreme Tracking and Fluid Dynamics Software. When shopping around, consider the detail and type of information provided, and select a solution that best meets your needs.

Related Links:

WebAdvantage.net article “Deciphering Your Traffic Logs”

Traffic Reporting Links:

http://dmoz.org/Computers/Software/Internet/Site_Management/Log_Analysis

http://dmoz.org/Computers/Internet/Web_Design_and_Development/Authoring/Web_Counters

FINAL EDITOR’S NOTE: If you found the information in this tip helpful, be on the lookout for the release of our upcoming eReport, “The Online Marketer’s Handbook To Traffic Reporting Services.” This e-report will help you cut through the clutter by providing an in-depth analysis of the various traffic reporting services available. For a no-obligation notification, send an email us!.

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