Website Analytics: How to Analyze Your Website Stats
You probably get some web site statistics on visitors from your web host -- maybe in the form of an incomprehensible log file. If you’re lucky you might get a rough analysis showing how often individual pages have been viewed. Or maybe you just have some sort of counter on your home page. You know those cool, free stat counters that you find on every second web site. Truth been told, not a very satisfactory measure of site traffic, and definitely completely useless in a business perspective Defining What to Measure and What to Analyze: KPI If this is as much as you do with the data, you’re definitely missing out on a lot of vital information which can really help you to fine-tune your site, steering visitors to those areas which you want them to visit -- like your order page? Every web site has Key Performance Indicators, or KPI’s. A KPI is a measurement of what you want people to do on your web site -- after all, your web site have a goal, a purpose -- Right? Say your site is selling a piece of software. Your main KPI would be how many visitors buy the software or download a free trial of the software. Maybe you have a news letter that you send every month with offers and information about your products or services. One KPI would be how many sign up for the newsletter -- another how many that click the links in your email and visits your Special Offer page. Or it can simply be one of the most obvious KPIs: How many users, how many page loads and for how long do they stay on your site. The longer they stay on your site, the more interesting your visitors find your site. Defining the KPI for a web page can be hard, but is extremely important for measuring how efficient your web site really is. One of the most important KPI’s for SEO Bomb is how many visitors get in touch with me and ask about SEO services for their web site. Some sites are simply about branding and promoting a certain product. Take Coca Cola for example. They sell all their products in stores, yet they have spent quite a few dollars on their website, and must have an incredibly advanced tracking system for their sites success. The Web Stats Program After having defined your KPIs, how do you measure it? You need a Web Site Stat program, and these come in many, many flavours -- from the simplest and most dreadful web based ones, like Webalizer, to simple, yet useful and free web stats like AWStats. If your budget allows it, you can go for the more advanced solutions, like ClickTracks, Omniture SiteCatalyst or Deepmetrix Live stats. These are all awesome, yet fairly pricy solutions that will certainly give you control over your visitors. There are also programs that include a number of other powerful tools for SEO and Keyword Analysis (http://www.seobomb.com/seo-links-and-resource-page/#free-seo-tools), such as WebCEO. WebCEO is the program I use on my site, so I highly recommend it. The program itself is free, but the price for the web stats module really isn’t bad either. Whatever web stat solution you choose, they must be able to show you the following information: - Number of visitors
Simply the number of visitors you get. One visitor may visit your site more than once, so you need: - Number of unique visitors
The number of unique visitors. - Visits per user
This number tells you how many times each visitor visits your web site - Time spent on site per user
Also referred to as "stickiness". What this number basically mean is how long the visitors stay on your site. - Most popular pages
Which pages does your visitors like? Which pages does not get a lot of traffic? Extremely useful information, and you can use these numbers to determine many things such as what kind of content does your visitors like? Which pages rank well in search engines? Which pages does not rank well in search engines? Most popular pages, Search Engines and Keywords & Key Phrases gives you the most important information about how well you perform in the Search Engines and how you can drive traffic to your site via SE’s - Demographics
From which country or state does your visitors come from? - Days of month and Days of week
This tells you on which day of the week you get the most visits. These and Time of day are very important numbers. If you’re a B2B company, and you get most of your visits in the weekends and after 5 in the afternoon, your web site is probably targeting the wrong visitors, because they are browsing from home. - Referrers
Referring sites can be very useful. Is there a particular site that send you a lot of traffic? Maybe you should consider buying advertisement on that site. - Search Engines
Simply an overview of which search engines are sending you the most traffic and how much. This is usually Google. - Search Key Phrases and Key Words
An overview of which keywords drive traffic to your website via search engines such as Google, MSN and Yahoo! Some of you may have noticed that I haven’t listed the ever-so-popular "hits" in the list, and the reason is very simple -- there’s no point, and it’s a completely useless number when analyzing from a business perspective. Or any perspective for that matter.One hit means every time the server gets a request for a file. That means that if I have one page on my site, but I have packed it with a million tiny 1 by 1 pixel pictures, I get one million and one hits (remember, one for the html file itself) every time a visitor loads that page. Doesn’t sound too impressive anymore, does it? With a simple and free web stat tool (http://www.seobomb.com/seo-links-and-resource-page/#web-site-statistics) such as AWStats, you have all this information presented in an easily understandable format. By now you should have a general idea about site statistics, but how can you use it to make your web site more profitable? One way is to drive more traffic to your site via SEO, SEM or banner/text ads. The sheer bulk of traffic will increase your "sales". Let’s just call it sales, but a sale can be everything from some one signing up to your news letter, sending you an email with a request or a download of your awesome software. Traffic vs. Sales Performance Sheer bulk of traffic is always good, as long as it’s targeted, but how can you convert your visitors into customers? How do you optimize your content to make it more selling? With more advanced site statistics tools you can analyze user paths, track the movement of your visitors throughout the site, and by doing so, get a better picture how they behave -- and better yet, control how they behave and make them do what you want them to do. Let’s use the software company again. You have a download page, and it’s linked in your main menu. You also have another page that receive a considerable amount of traffic via search engines. The only thing that connects these two pages are the link in the main menu to the download page. Some times, if the content on the popular page is really interesting, your visitors are so focused on reading that they do not look at the rest of the page. The more interruptive banner ads you have on your page, the more this rule will apply. What do you do if some one yells directly into your ear? Of course you cover them. Internet users nowadays, and experienced users in particular, have developed what I like to refer to as tunnel vision -- they simply block everything but the content they’re reading. Sounds familiar? I wouldn’t be surprised if you were one of them. After all you’re reading a rather nerdy case study about web site stats. Both SiteCatalyst and ClickTracks have a really nice feature that lets you open your site in your browser, and it will highlight the links that are most popular -- with number of clicks, percentage and all. Very nice and incredibly useful feature. So how do you solve this problem? By adding links to the download page in the content of the popular page. Whoever’s reading that page cannot avoid to notice it, and it will drive traffic to the download page. One of my goals with my site SEOBomb.com is to share my page about SEO Links and Resources. Just for fun, scroll up and count how many links I have to that section of the site. Did you already click on any of them? If so, I guess that proves my point.(And I hope you find it useful, because I spend a lot of time on it.) Web Site Trend Analysis Here comes the fun part. By following the trends over time, you get a better overview of what’s going on. On your site, and on the internet. I can tell you that most of the web sites I’ve been involved in to date gets the most traffic on a Thursday. It doesn’t matter what month or what year. Thursday is traffic day. Of course it depends on what business you are in, but I am confident this applies for most business sites. Obviously, leisure sites will have a different traffic pattern. Take a online casino site for example. Chances are they receive the most traffic in the weekends and in the afternoon on weekdays. Chances are also that they are most profitable in the beginning of each month and in the middle of each month. Why, you ask? It’s pretty simple. Payday the 15th and the 30th. Wild guess -- on which days of the month does it make most sense for the online casino site to launch a new campaign? In the beginning and in the middle of the month, of course. That’s when their potential customers have money available. By looking at your web site statistics and by analyzing your target audience, you can tweak the performance of your web site. It doesn’t matter if you are a one man company, a mid size corporation or a Fortune 500 Company -- Everybody can increase web site performance and revenue by analyzing your web site stats and applying the proper strategy accordingly. Sverre Sjothun
SEO Specialist and Owner of the SEO Bomb.com Blog To learn more about his take on SEO, visit his blog SEO Bomb.com - Explosive Search Engine Optimization Sverre is a Search Engine Optimization Specialist with a specialization in technical SEO, web site performance and conversions and is working for one of the top 10 online gambling sites on the net. |
Other Online Casino Articles
Washington Casinos The state of Washington offers a number of casino and gambling opportunities. Many Washington casinos operated by local Native American tribes are conveniently located near highways or Washington cities. Twenty-seven Washington casinos are operated in Native American lands. All of Washington's casinos offer slot machines, roulette, blackjack, cr ...Website Analytics: How to Analyze Your Website Stats You probably get some web site statistics on visitors from your web host -- maybe in the form of an incomprehensible log file. If you’re lucky you might get a rough analysis showing how often individual pages have been viewed.Or maybe you just have some sort of counter on your home page. You know those cool, free stat counters that ...Understanding Online Casino and Poker Room Bonuses Casino bonuses are when a casino offers a bonus in the form of free money or chips to players. These bonuses are used to entice new players to come into the casino and play their favorite games of chance. These bonuses are also given to current players to thank them and to encourage them to return to play again at another time.Casinos off ...The Tattoo That Pays You It all started with Forehead Goldie, a Utah woman named Karolyne Smith who agreed to have GoldenPalace.com permanently tattooed on her forehead for $10,000 in order to pay for her child to go to school. Since then, GoldenPalace.com, the online casino and poker room more famous for its publicity stunts than its games, has capitalized on what may ...Online Casino Craps All top-rated casinos offer the game of Craps in its classic version as well as a specially designed web version. The newer versions of the game commonly played are: Private Craps, Money Craps, Bank Craps, Scarney Craps and New York Craps.The preference for a particular Online Craps may depend upon the choice of the players to play just f ...Online Gambling and Online Casinos Guide Online gambling and online casinos are great for the gambling fanatics. Online casinos offer the opportunity to the gambling lovers to play through the internet, regardless of their location. However, in the beginning, the uncertainty about losing the cash and doubt about the legality of the enterprise restrained quite a few players from enterin ...Poker Tournaments Can Reap Huge Rewards If you play poker online, then you know what a rush it is to “pull up a seat”. The advantage of playing online is you can register with any poker room and be playing a tournament within minutes, whether it’s for pin money or high stakes.There are a number of freeroll tournaments that you can participate in on a daily basis to get some imp ...Do You Need Help Promoting Your Adult Book? You’ve just had your first erotic book published. Or, maybe it’s your second or third, it really doesn’t matter. You’re feeling excited and ready for the next step as a published author: Your book’s promotion online.You settle down in front of your computer and start to look for places to submit your book listing to but, it doesn’t take y ...Online Casinos Online Casinos are a multibillion-dollar industry. Recognized as one of the most flourishing industries today, casinos have become a preferred source of entertainment for many people. The evolution of the Internet and the subsequent technological development has put gambling at a casino within everybody’s reach.An Online Casino gives you ...Best Bet for Poker Chip Sets Are you an insatiable poker player seeking a new set of chips? These chips are not only used for playing card games, they can be on the roulette and blackjack tables at casinos. There are many different varieties of poker chip sets, so make sure you get a set that is right for you.Most of the poker chips are made from plastic but there ar ...DVD Movie Club - Movies Delivered Right To Your Mail Box It's dark, cold, raining or all threeBut you get in your car anyway and fight your way through traffic to the nearest video store.When you finally arriveYou quickly discover that the movie your really want isn't even available, the check-out line is way too long, the clerk is too slow, you forgot your store card and you have ...Win At Online Gambling Part 2 - Games Of Skill We have already looked at how to win at online gambling with games of chance but by their very nature they are games of chance and you only need to place the bets with the best odds of success.Here we will look at 3 games to win at online gambling that involve a degree of skill where you can influence the outcome of the game.Becaus ...Blackjack Tournaments Blackjack is one of the more popular games played in real and virtual casinos. The excitement surrounding the game lends to its popularity as there is always shouting, laughing, and cheering around the blackjack table.It stands to reason that blackjack tournaments would be no different. Even the online versions of blackjack tournaments ar ...Best Affiliate Marketing Program If you’re interested in getting involved with affiliate marketing you want to find the best affiliate marketing program available. The best affiliate marketing program may be a poker room website. A poker room will pay you commissions for referring players who gamble on its website. The commission is based on the rake, which is the portion of ea ...Free Slots If you do not have the time or the money to go to a casino, but you want to experience the thrill of playing slot machines, then go to the Internet and play free slots. It’s the leading online game these days because it is fun, quick and pays real money. Try it and see why so many people get hooked.How do I play free slots?Most onl ...Harrahs Casino Empire Harrahs casino was founded in 1937 as Harrahs Entertainment, Inc. Though it is a Las Vegas-based company, it has spread it's casino hotels and resorts all over USA from the east coast branches to the California casino branch. This company is the worlds premier provider of branded casino entertainment.Harrahs Entertainment owns and/or ...Poker Games Online If you are looking to play some poker games online, the first thing that you will want to do is find a good, reputable poker website. A good poker website will be easy to navigate, and will have a tutorial to help you learn how to play at their site. Playing poker games online can be a great experience, and with the right poker website you’ll ...
|
