Understanding the Traffic Statistics of Your Web Site

To determine if your online marketing campaign is successful, you cannot simply rely on the number of people that visit your site or the number of hits that your site generates; these numbers do not tell you how your site is actually performing. Rather, you must analyze data that tells you where people are coming from and how they’re using your site. This information will help you determine if your site is meeting your marketing goals.

Some key areas that you need to analyze to determine your Web site’s performance are:

• How many unique visitors are coming to your site?
• Where are they coming from?
• How did they find your site?
• What keyword phrases did someone use to find your site?
• What are they doing once they’re there?
• How many people filled out a form or took an action?

Analyzing the data from all three of these questions will help you will help you determine if your site is meeting the needs of your visitors.

How Many Unique Visitors are Coming to Your Site?
Where are Visitors Coming From?
What are Visitors Doing Once They’re on Your Site?

Finally, it is important to know the last page visitors see before they leave your site. If visitors are leaving your site before they learn what it is you can offer them and how they can contact you, your site is not very effective. Perhaps visitors are landing on a page that links to outside Web sites, taking your visitors away before they get a chance to realize that you offer the services they are looking for. Or maybe you have a page with dead links or is not very appealing to visitors. It is important to determine why visitors are leaving your site. If they are leaving after they decide to retain your services, that’s great. But if they’re leaving because they’re frustrated or distracted, that’s not so great. The good news is, you can determine what is driving your potential customers away and what is keeping them there when you have a comprehensive analysis of your Web traffic.