Web Statistics: Why You Need Them

Does the thought of statistics make your toes curl? Do you cavalierly dismiss web stats as unnecessary? Have you looked at your site's stats but have no clue what they mean? Read on to discover why understanding your web statistics—and making decisions based on them—goes hand-in-hand with having a successful website.

User Satisfaction

How do you know if users are happy with your website? You can glean a lot of information about their satisfaction level from your stats report. How long are they on your site? Do they just stay only a few seconds and then dash off—not a good sign. You want them to stay awhile and engage.

Which are your most popular pages? Which are your least popular ones? Are these stats what you expected? Can you improve your less popular pages, or should you remove them? Evaluate the numbers.

Because your website is not like a book and people can come into your site on any page, you should find out where they enter your site most often (entrance pages). Your entrance page is usually your home page, but it may not be. Next, take a look at where visitors are exiting your site. Can you make changes on these pages to keep visitors engaged?

Marketing and SEO Efforts

It's important to know if your SEO (search engine optimization) efforts are paying off—your web tracking reports can provide this key information. You will be able to see which keyphrases visitors type into their search engines to get to your site. Also, you may see which search engines are used to do so. These results may surprise you. Maybe no one is searching on terms you've optimized for. Tracking which terms people are using to find your site gives you valuable insight. You may want to optimize for these "surprise" keyphrases if they are relevant and recurring.

Depending on your marketing and your tracking software, you may be able to track specific marketing campaign efforts. For example, you can create specific landing pages tied to a campaign so that you can track the response numbers. If you can track resulting conversion rates, you will be able to calculate your ROI on your campaign.

Of course, the key to generating traffic on your website is being found online. Your web stats will show you how often the search engine robots are visiting your site. An active site with frequently added or refreshed content will see these robots visiting daily (the robots want to make sure they have your most updated content). Your report may call these "robots," "spiders," or "user agents." You want to see the top three as frequent visitors: Yahoo Slurp (Yahoo!), MSNBot (MSN Search), and Googlebot (Google).

Know Your Customers

The more you know about your visitors, the better you will be able to craft your content to appeal to your target audience and meet their needs. Your web traffic reports will let you know how many visitors access your site. You want those numbers to increase!

You may be able to determine which countries your visitors are from (although this data is generally not highly reliable). If you are focused on an international business, you'll want this information. And if your number of international visitors is high, you may want to provide translated pages to possibly tap into a new customer base. Your market and your country visitor numbers could help you decide.

If you have a linking program, or even if you don't, you'll be able to see referrers—links on other sites that people clicked on to get to your site. Are these beneficial links, or are you receiving misdirected traffic?

Which days and times do people most often visit your site? It may be valuable to know if most visitors come to your site in the evenings or on the weekends. You can also check for increased traffic immediately after a promotional activity—is it working?

Site Functionality

In general, this technical information is most useful for your web designer. Information on visitors' screen resolution is helpful for determining size parameters for a site redesign. You can check which operating systems (Windows, Macintosh, Linux) and browsers (MS Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari, Mozilla, etc.) people use to access your site. If a large percentage of visitors use the Mac platform and your site doesn't accommodate them, you may be losing business. Reviewing the HTTP status codes will let your web developer know if there are any file problems. Bandwidth usage will let you know if you will exceed any allotment you have.

Types of Website Statistics Trackers

There are essentially two types of tracking software, on server or off server, with a few flavors each. Some people use on page hit counters, but these are worthless. When selecting on server or off server tracking, consider the pros and cons of each kind, depending on your unique requirements.

Off Server Stats Tracking

Statistics tracking software that lives on a server other than the server where your website lives (is hosted) requires javascripting to be added to your web pages. Overall, this type of tracking is less accurate than on server tracking because glitches can occur while data is being transmitted to the tracking software. You can get free off server tracking, but this usually requires adding a visible button or link on your web pages—free advertising for that company. Paid off server tracking may not have this requirement. And although this can be a pricey option, you can offload your stats reporting to others who can create various custom reports for you.

On Server Stats Tracking

On server statistics tracking software lives on the same server as your website. It directly interprets your server's log files, which record exactly what happens with your site's files. Frequently, your ISP will include a free stats package or will offer a paid one. Just as frequently, these are not very good packages—review yours to see if it's worthwhile. Your other option is to install your own tracking software. Note that some of these may adversely affect your site's load time. You can choose free open source software, a purchased solution, or have a custom program developed depending on the complexity of your business and your tracking needs.

Read part two of this article, "Web Statistics: How to Read Them," for explanations on terms and reports.

About Cool Plum Design

Cool Plum Design is a full-service web design business. We work with clients throughout the United States who need to represent their business online. We offer quality, customer-focused solutions integrating design, functionality, and content.

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