Philip Harman ”;
Web analytics has been around for a long time but only in the last few
years has it grown to provide data more useful to online shops and
websites. The basic web analytics services were based off log files,
and this service usually came packaged along with your hosting server.
It simply worked by tracking each action conducted on your website as a
hit and then converted this data into reports. In the following years
it moved on from using log files to using transparent images to track
the visitors directly. This opened a whole new line of data for web
entrepreneurs to use their arsenal for better web promotion.WHY TRACK?The simplest answer would be to improve on your website’s purpose. But
this is only possible if you correctly use the statistical information
you have collected on your visitors. A basic analytics program would
tell you six things:1. NUMBER OF VISITORSTo see growth and also better understand your visitors and fluctuation
of traffic on a hourly, daily and monthly basis. This helps better sell
your advertising space once you have an idea of the exposure your
website has.2. PAGE VIEWSFind out how many impressions you have and if visitors see more than a
single page on your website before exiting. This would help pinpoint
any webpages on your website that are not ‘sticky’ which you can then
improve on.3. ENTRY/EXITSee which webpage your visitor entered from and where they left your
website. Sometimes you would be able to see if certain webpages made
your visitors felt lost or just didn’t display user-friendly navigation
to allow them to move on to your target pages.4. REFERRERSIs your website positioned well in search engines or do you mainly
receive traffic from other websites and banner advertising. Find your
website’s strengths and weaknesses and see what needs to be done to
improve overall.5. SEARCH PHRASESSometimes visitors find your website using keywords you wouldn’t
expect. One of the quickest ways to increase traffic to your website
would be to find keywords your website is popular for and build more
pages based around those words. It is difficult to sometimes tell why
search engines choose your website as the source of information for a
certain keyword but knowing it will help you capitalize on the
situation and not waste your time and resources focusing on less
frequently occurring keywords searches.6. GEOGRAPHICAL / SYSTEM INFORMATIONThis is a broad array of information covering where your visitor is
located, his PC and browser information plus various other details that
would help you better build your website to suit your public. A simple
example would be that if most of your visitors are using Internet
Explorer browser in 640×480 resolution then it would be very important
your website look nice and usable at that settings.NEW LINE: ECOMMERCEAs websites grew more complex and online shopping became a norm, web
entrepreneurs needed more information to better server their shoppers.
This gave light to a new list of statistical information that would
prove very useful, mainly the following three:1. REVENUE TRACKINGIs your traffic converting to sales? Which keyword do customers type in
search engines that actually go on and convert to sales? Find out this
and more to better target your products to customers.2. CAMPAIGN TRACKINGDue to the competitive nature of online shopping, advertising is
standard practice for ecommerce websites. Popular advertising services
such as Google Adwords, Overture and MSN AdCenter allow websites to
make quick sales with no downpayment, strictly on a per-click basis.
But how do you know which advertising campaign has a good ROI.
Collecting information on this helps you better decide where to invest
your advertising dollar for maximum effectiveness.3. CLICKPATHSThe main focus of ecommerce websites is to make the sale. Once your
visitor has found the product they are put through a series of pages to
make the purchase. Obviously you can’t guide them through the whole
process in person but if you could see the path they had taken it would
be as good. Find out where your customers get stuck, at which checkout
step they decide to leave your website or look for your FAQs page. This
information will make your website more user-friendly and in turn help
you increase sales.BOTTOM LINEStatistics is a very important aspect of any website. It covers a wide
gambit of points that website owners should be aware of in order to
effectively optimize their website. This includes popularity i.e.
website growth, advertising space value and maximizing conversion of
sales. But this is all only useful if you know how to properly utilize
it. Basic statistics is easy to understand for any beginner but if you
run an ecommerce or high traffic website with valuable advertising
space it is highly recommended you get in touch with a professional to
guide you through how to read the reports and properly utilize the
results.
Article Tags:
Advertising Space, Search Engines
Source: Free Articles from ArticlesFactory.com
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
As Internut’s Projects Director, Vinay Gorasia has successfully managed analytics campaigns for small start up to Fortune 500 companies. All solutions are custom designed to increase productivity of every website by providing relevant statistics. To find out more visit http://www.internut.com.my today.
