Insight Into Your Website

Part 1, Monitoring Web Statistics

Improve your business online… just by reading this article.

This is the first of a four-part series on Web site issues. Part one shows you how Silver Oaks can help you through the sometimes daunting pile of site usage statistics, and sort out what they mean to you.

Businesses that succeed online understand the importance of analyzing their Web traffic. All the traffic in the world will not mean a thing if you don't have an understanding of what is working and what is costing you money. Do you know what happens when a visitor gets to your site? How many visitors are going to your site? Where do they come from? What pages do they read? What keywords lead to sales? Are your visitors getting lost? You need to ask those types of questions, and we can help you answer them.

Silver Oaks Web marketers understand that good advertising and a successful Web site are backed by sound data analysis. We can track Web site behavior patterns, understand navigation patterns, analyze overall site performance and make recommendations based on our findings.

Capturing metrics, or measurements of potential customer actions, is a key benefit of having an e-presence. Technology has enabled Internet marketers to measure every aspect of their online marketing campaigns and you should take full advantage of it. Analyzing your Web stats can be instrumental for your business success in a number of different ways. This article will help you understand what stats are important and provide some insight into knowing your audience.

Statistics You Want To Pay Attention To:

unique or return visitor

this is a person who visits your site more than once within a specific period of time

visitor duration

how much time each user spends on your site and on which pages

page views

what pages most interest your visitors?

referral sites

what other sites are sending you traffic?

history

what hours, days, weeks, months do you receive your heaviest flow of traffic?

search engines

what search engines drive the most traffic to your site?

keywords/phrases

what keywords/phrases drive traffic to your site?

The goal here is to use your Web stats to determine how your site is performing for first-time visitors and return visitors. The visitor duration stat tells you how much time a visitor spends on your site. You may notice visitors are leaving soon after they land on your site. This could be a clue that they are not finding what they are looking for.

Pay special attention to page views. This stat will tell you exactly what pages most interest visitors and can help determine which pages need to be tweaked. Page views will calculate how many visitors viewed a particular page and how many exited through that page as well. If you can see that visitors spend a lot of time on a particular page it may be worth focusing more attention on that page or moving some copy around to cater to these visitors.

Whether you run an online retail store or you use your Web site for informational purposes, it’s essential to analyze the performance of keywords that drive traffic to your site. You must identify:

• what keywords generate traffic
• the density of keywords on your site
• how much each keyword costs per click
• what keywords generate page views
• keyword conversions
• ROI

A keyword analysis will help you put your marketing dollars toward the keywords that generate superior results.

Ranking high in the search engines is a goal every business admires but ranking high with poor results is just a waste of money. A full understanding of your search terms, what kinds of visitors they generate and their performance levels will dramatically improve your site’s performance and ROI.

Silver Oaks experts in Web marketing will work with you to evaluate your Web stats and improve the productivity of your site. With guidance from us, you will realize the potential of your online presence.

Our next article, “Insight Into Your Web Site: How to Enhance Site Navigation,” builds on the concepts that we have presented here with a focus more on customer interaction once a visitor lands on your site. If you have questions regarding your Web stats, please e-mail us at info@silveroaks.com.