Web Hosting Articles - Analyzing Website Traffic
Analyzing Website Traffic
Statistics for your website are commonly available with any standard web hosting plan. At least, basic information is made available, like the number of unique visitors who visited your site, the total amount of pageviews, which pages in your site were most viewed, etc.
More robust statistics programs will log things like the visitor's IP address, where your visitor originated from (a search engine or another website) which browser the visitor uses, and some even tell you how much time the visitor has spent on each page visited within your site.
When you are running a promotional campaign of any sort, you will want to understand the impact it is having on your visitors. Is it working? Is it attracting new visitors to your site? Analysing your statistics is a chore for every marketing campaign you run to avoid throwing money away.
But there are more definite answers you can find in your website's statistics to help you reach an indepth understanding of how your campaign is working.
Is your site nice? A good statistics analyst will show you which browser and platform the visitor is using to access your site. This is important information because, as you know, unless you have a quality ASP-style site, each browser will show your site differently. Equally, the platform is important. If you are designing your site in a computer running on Linux, for example, a visitor using a desktop running on a Windows platform may have issues when visiting your site. Colours may appear differently, your fonts may not be available, and the layout may be all over the place if your CSS is not properly built.
This is why it is important to test your site on all browsers and platforms before launching it. This is especially important just before a major marketing campaign.
Are you reaching the right market? From the IP address of your visitors, you can see which part of the globe these visitors are located in. You may be targetting the European market, and so only IP addresses located in Europe would interest you. If your traffic log shows a surge in visitors from another continent, then it may be that your advertising campaigns are wrongly implemented.
For example, if you place an ad for your site in Google AdWords, you have the option for your adverts to appear only to a specific geographic location. Google will show your ad only in its German site if you request for your ads to appear only to German websurfers. If you choose for your ads to appear within Google's Publisher network, then your adverts will also appear in German websites.
Where do your visitors go? If you have a good statistics program implemented, you can tell where at least 50% of your visitors are coming from. I say 50% because some visitors will originate from a site which does not identify itself, and so that referring website will not be logged in your statistics. Where your visitors are coming from will show you which advertising campaigns are working.
Keyword-targetting For example, for those visitors which appear to find your website through a search engine, you will also be able to see which keywords or phrases lead them to you. This is imperative analysis. Have a close and regular look at the keywords which are succesfully attracting traffic to your site.
Then, work on these keywords. Build backlinks to your site from other sites which have the same keywords as you do. This is hard and long-term work which will also take time to give you results. But it is the cheapest form of advertising. And when you pay for a link to be placed in a website that leads back to your website, it will generally stay there.
Advertising in Google AdWords, for example, is very expensive. You pay anything from 20 cents upward every time someone clicks on your advert. If your advert is not properly constructed - with keywords, geographic targetting and adequate phrasing - you could well be paying for a lot of clicks that lead to no business whatsoever. The key here is to concentrate on a small amount of keywords or phrases. Many webhosts put far too many keywords up for their ads and their advertising budget withers away very quickly. A smaller number of keywords may only trickle in a few clicks per day, but you will be sure you are attracting the right customer.
More robust statistics programs will log things like the visitor's IP address, where your visitor originated from (a search engine or another website) which browser the visitor uses, and some even tell you how much time the visitor has spent on each page visited within your site.
When you are running a promotional campaign of any sort, you will want to understand the impact it is having on your visitors. Is it working? Is it attracting new visitors to your site? Analysing your statistics is a chore for every marketing campaign you run to avoid throwing money away.
But there are more definite answers you can find in your website's statistics to help you reach an indepth understanding of how your campaign is working.
Is your site nice? A good statistics analyst will show you which browser and platform the visitor is using to access your site. This is important information because, as you know, unless you have a quality ASP-style site, each browser will show your site differently. Equally, the platform is important. If you are designing your site in a computer running on Linux, for example, a visitor using a desktop running on a Windows platform may have issues when visiting your site. Colours may appear differently, your fonts may not be available, and the layout may be all over the place if your CSS is not properly built.
This is why it is important to test your site on all browsers and platforms before launching it. This is especially important just before a major marketing campaign.
Are you reaching the right market? From the IP address of your visitors, you can see which part of the globe these visitors are located in. You may be targetting the European market, and so only IP addresses located in Europe would interest you. If your traffic log shows a surge in visitors from another continent, then it may be that your advertising campaigns are wrongly implemented.
For example, if you place an ad for your site in Google AdWords, you have the option for your adverts to appear only to a specific geographic location. Google will show your ad only in its German site if you request for your ads to appear only to German websurfers. If you choose for your ads to appear within Google's Publisher network, then your adverts will also appear in German websites.
Where do your visitors go? If you have a good statistics program implemented, you can tell where at least 50% of your visitors are coming from. I say 50% because some visitors will originate from a site which does not identify itself, and so that referring website will not be logged in your statistics. Where your visitors are coming from will show you which advertising campaigns are working.
Keyword-targetting For example, for those visitors which appear to find your website through a search engine, you will also be able to see which keywords or phrases lead them to you. This is imperative analysis. Have a close and regular look at the keywords which are succesfully attracting traffic to your site.
Then, work on these keywords. Build backlinks to your site from other sites which have the same keywords as you do. This is hard and long-term work which will also take time to give you results. But it is the cheapest form of advertising. And when you pay for a link to be placed in a website that leads back to your website, it will generally stay there.
Advertising in Google AdWords, for example, is very expensive. You pay anything from 20 cents upward every time someone clicks on your advert. If your advert is not properly constructed - with keywords, geographic targetting and adequate phrasing - you could well be paying for a lot of clicks that lead to no business whatsoever. The key here is to concentrate on a small amount of keywords or phrases. Many webhosts put far too many keywords up for their ads and their advertising budget withers away very quickly. A smaller number of keywords may only trickle in a few clicks per day, but you will be sure you are attracting the right customer.
