Perhaps the best indicators on how well your website is performing are your web stats. After going through all the efforts of creating, publishing and maintaining your site for a while, it would be a grave mistake to simply assume that your work is done and figure it is now time sit back and relax.
The first thing a website owner should understand about websites is that it is never a one-time job. In fact, nothing related to a website should remain unchanged for too long. There are many factors out there that determine the rise and fall of traffic – many of which you can adapt your site to handle.
Search engines update their algorithms at least once a year, in Google’s case it happens more often. Realizing what they have changed and what you need to do to cater to those changes is critical if you still want your site to remain busy. Other factors could include new norms preferred by visitors, changes in browsing habits, introduction of new technologies and even popular looks like colors, features and fonts which make your site obsolete.
Whatever the cause, you will need information that alerts you when your site’s traffic is waning – and you can get it all from your web stats. These stats can be read from tools that can easily be configured to work with your server, but most hosting providers usually offer them for free.
So what do you need to understand from reading your web stats? Here are a few key terms:
Search Keyphrases: before we touch any of the other terms we need to have a look at this particular one. The search keyword stats are arguably the most important of all the data you have. The list of keyphrases and the numbers next to them represent how many people typed in the particular keyphrases in order to arrive at your site. The higher the number next to a keyword, the better your website ranks for it. You can create more content using those keyphrases and attract even more visitors because you now know exactly what they are looking for.
Unique Visitors: these are the number of different individuals who have visited your site. When visitors arrive on your site their IP address is registered as one unique visitor. If that same visitor returns later (from the same IP address) the count doesn’t increase. This helps you realize how many separate visitors have visited your site. If this number drops, it means you need to work on your marketing and SEO.
Entry (Landing) Page: this is the first page your visitors encountered when they arrived on your site. It too is a good indicator of what your visitors are searching for. If a particular page on your website attracts more visits than the others it could mean one of two things: either there is something on it that people want or you have done a swell marketing job on it and they are being driven by your SEO tactics. Either way, find out what it is and try to apply it to all your pages.
Visit Duration: you do not want your visitors to simply come to your site and then “bounce” right back away. The longer their visit duration the better – it means something has caught their attention. Hence pages with the shortest visit duration times need to have their content revised because visitors are leaving them without finding what they want or because there is something else wrong with them (The page crashes or is non-existent, perhaps?).
Exit Pages: exit pages are the last pages your visitors were on before they moved on. Now, depending on what is on your exit pages, the numbers could be good or bad signs. If the page most of your visitors exit from is a subscription form, for example, it could be an indication that they sign up before moving on – this is good. On the other hand if they leave from the entry (landing page) it could be a sign that something is wrong with it and needs to be fixed – Again, is the link broken? Doesn’t it have what your visitors are expecting? Is it overwhelmingly crowded with content that they can’t find what they are looking for?
Referring URLs: it is a good thing to know which sites helped your visitors find you. The sites that referred you could be search engines or other websites. Either way, you will be able to use the information to drive even more traffic – continue with you SEO strategy and/or put your links to sites similar to those that sent traffic your way.
Browser Type: there are many browsers out there and you can never know which one(s) your visitors will use. But you can have a look at your stats and check to see if all your pages are compatible with, and easily viewable using, all of them. In case it isn’t compatible with a particular browser you can inform your visitors using it to either upgrade or use a totally different one – thus ensuring they stay longer and get what they want.
These are the basics of web stats. When used well, the information they provide can be used to improve a site’s performance you should therefore keep an eye on it all.
