Analyzing Your Website Traffic

Web traffic statistics analysis can be an invaluable tool for various reasons, but before using this tool you will need to learn how to interpret the data. 

You will probably be aware that most web hosting companies provide you with basic web traffic information for you to analyze. Much of this information can be very comprehensive, however, and if you don’t fully understand how it applies to your business, the data can be overwhelming. 

If we start by examining the average number of visits to your site on a daily, weekly and monthly basis, at first glance it would appear that the more traffic you see recorded the better your site is doing. This can be misleading, however, as the behaviour of your site visitors needs to be considered to accurately gauge the site’s effectiveness. 

The number of ‘hits’ to your site simply means the number of information requests received by the server. A server recording of, say, 20 hits may just be related to a single visitor checking out your site. Hits, therefore, are not useful in analyzing your website traffic. 

The more visitors that visit your site the more accurate the interpretation becomes, with the increase in traffic making a more precise analysis of overall trends in visitor behaviour. The smaller the number of visitors, the more the analysis becomes distorted. 

Web traffic statistics interpreted correctly should let you know how well or how poorly your site is performing for your visitors. An aid to determine this is to find out how long visitors are staying on your pages. If the time is brief, it usually indicates a problem that will be a challenge to find out. 

Perhaps your keywords are bringing the wrong type of visitor to your website, or that an over-abundance of graphics are intimidating and causing the visitors to exit quickly. The knowledge that visitors are leaving your site quickly should promote prompt action from you to pinpoint specific problems and fix them. 

Website traffic statistics can reveal vital information about the effectiveness of individual pages. If, for example, you note that visitors are spending a lot of time on pages that you consider not too important, perhaps you should consider moving some of your sales content and marketing focus onto those particular pages. 

After you have analyzed your visitor statistics, have a look at your keywords and phrases. Note if certain keywords are bringing a specific type of visitor to your website. The more targeted the visitor, the more chance they will find what they need from your site. 

On the other hand, if a large number of visitors are attracted to your site by inappropriate keywords then you will need to adjust those keywords to bring you quality visitors. Close analysis of the keywords being used to find your site will give you a better understanding of your visitor’s requirements.