How to understand what visitors do on your website


It is crucial to understand what visitors do on your site. If your visitors go to purchase a product but then a large majority leave the website when they get to a specific page in the order process then you need to know about it. It could be that this site is confusing or tough to use. Fixing it might increase your sales by 200%. Case a good example; many reasons exist the reason why you desire a detailed analysis of your site visitors.

Most website hosting services offer a stats package that you can study. If you're unsure where this is, contact your hosting service and ask them. Statistics really are a vital a part of tracking your marketing progress. If you do not have use of website statistics get a package that can help you in el born area. Do not get a counter that just shows the number of visitors you've had. You will be missing out on vital information that can help strengthen weaknesses in your site.

A good website hosting service would offer traffic logs that offer an invaluable understanding of the traffic being known a web site from various sources for example search engines, directories and other links.

Unfortunately traffic tracking provided by web hosting services is often in the form of raw traffic log files or other hard to understand cryptic formats. These log files are basically text files that describe actions on the site. It's literally impossible to use the raw log files to understand what your readers are doing. If you don't have the patience to undergo these huge traffic logs, choosing a traffic-logging package will be a wise decision.

Basically two options are open to you and these are: using a log analysis package or subscribing to a remotely hosted traffic logging service. A remotely hosted traffic logging service may be simple to use and it is usually the cheaper option of these two. WebTrends Live and HitsLink are two good, remotely hosted, traffic-monitoring services worth considering.

However, WebTrends Live is a more complicated system and is ideal for larger ecommerce websites. SuperStats is yet another recommended traffic logging service. These services don't use your log files. Typically a small portion of code is placed on any page you need to track. Once the page is viewed, information is stored on the remote server and available in real time to be viewed.

Log analysis packages are usually expensive to buy and complex to setup. Aside from commercial packages there's also some free log analysis packages available, for example Analog. A good traffic logging service would provide statistics pertaining to the next:

Understanding the solutions to these and other fundamental questions is essential to make informed decisions that increase the return on investment (ROI) of your web site investment.

The most important facet of tracking visitors to your website is analyzing all of the statistics you get from your tracking software. The three main statistics that will show your overall progress are hits, visitors and page views. Hits are tracked when any picture or page loads from your server on to a visitor's browser. Hits, however, can be very misleading. It is extremely an irrelevant statistic for your website.

The statistic that has become the most important for a website is Page Views/Visitors. This provides you a very good sign of two things. First, the number of individuals are visiting your site, and secondly how long could they be staying on your site. If you have 250 visitors and 300 page views you can figure that most visitors view one page on your site and then leave.

Generally, if you are not getting 2 page views per visitor then you should consider upgrading your site's content so your visitors will stay around longer. If you see the quantity of visitors you have increasing as well since the number of page views per visitor increasing then continue the great work! Always look with this stat being an overall barometer of how your site design is certainly going and when your marketing campaigns take hold.

Also, a great stat to look for is exclusive visitors. Once a person visits your site they're not going to be added to the unique visitors' category if they visit again. This is a good way to track new visitors to your website. Page views make the perfect indication of how sticky your website is. A great statistic to keep is Page Views divided through the quantity of Visitors you have. This statistic provides you with advisable if your content is interesting and if your readers are staying on your site for a long time and surfing.

Many people are afraid of web traffic statistics, but they shouldn't be. While there are many highly specialized statistics that may be used for more in-depth web traffic analysis, the above mentioned areas alone can provide invaluable information on your visitors and your website performance. Remember- this information is available for grounds. It's up to you to make use of it.

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Note: This article was sent to us by: Zack Errols at 03162011

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