Analyze Your Web Site Statistics

Using Website Traffic Analysis For Internet Marketing

If you really intend to be successful with your Internet marketing, you will need to gather information on the visitors to your web site and how they use it. Never before in any business have we had the opportunity to find out so much about our own business and its customers as we have today.

There are several methods of gathering this information: One method uses the traffic history contained in the server’s log files. These files keep track of all activity on the server in case of failure or back tracking. They were not intended for monitoring web site traffic, although they can be used for this purpose. However the process of extracting the data from a busy server, collating it and presenting it to you is pretty slow and messy. Also, the log files don’t contain all the data needed for complete website traffic analysis.

Other systems make use of small (and sometimes not so small) bits of HTML code added to your web pages. These bits of code extract data from your visitor’s browser and send it to a database on either the web host’s or your own server. The information gathered in this manner is more tailored to your needs and can be collected and presented in real time. This will provide you with instant reporting available at any time and on demand.

In either case, the data can either be gathered by stand-alone software or through a service. I’ll save discussion of the merits of the various systems and services for another article, and just concentrate on what the numbers can do for us.

My aim in this article is to show you how to read your web statistics and use the numbers to enhance your e-business and increase Sales. And let’s face it, the bottom line is always Sales, with a capital ‘S’.

In the following sections, I’ll try to show you what overall groups of statistics you should be getting, what analysis should be provided and how to interpret the information. This will help you find both the weaknesses and strengths of your web site and hopefully point out ways to improve it.

First let’s cover the basic elements that should be provided with any web traffic stats service. Then we will look at those extra items that, if available, will help make your web site a cyberspace gorilla. First, just a quick overview of the items covered in this section. Then we will look into each in detail.

The Basics:

Overall Traffic Summary (Hit Counter)
Visitor Statistics
Pages Visited
Search Engines
Keywords and Phrases
Browsers, cookies and other technical data