I’m often surprised that the majority of business owners and managers don’t measure their online marketing activities and website statistics. Many do not even measure how many visitors they are getting to their website each month! How about you? Do you know how many visitors you get to your website? Do you know if your online marketing is working?
To be able to track trends and to assess the success of your website and other online marketing activities it’s essential to have access to some statistical information.
If you don’t already have this information or know how to access statistics for your website then I suggest asking your web designer or hosting company for help and instructions.
- If you have your website hosted with a company that offers CPANEL (as all Web Chameleon website clients do), then you’ll have easy access to website statistics using AWSTATS or;
- Google Analytics is by far my favourite website statistics option these days. It’s free and can be set up on almost any website.
If you look after your own website then check out Google Analytics here. And if you rely on your web designer/provider then ask them what they have available. If they cannot offer an option for allowing you to view your website statistics then suggest Google Analytics to them. If they can’t or will not help with that then it’s probably past time for you to change providers.
What online measures can you track?
Once you get access to your website statistics what information is most important for you to assess? Below is an outline of the more important and most basic metrics and what they mean;
Website Visitors: The number of unique visitors will help you to determine how many visitors you receive each day, week or month and you can track the trend over time to see whether numbers are increasing, decreasing or staying the same.
An important distinction is the difference between “visitors” versus “hits”. Each person who visits your site is considered a “visitor”. Each time a visitor looks at a page, that page and its contents are retrieved, including the graphics on the page and these are counted as ‘hits’.
An example is 1 unique visitor comes to your home page, and on your home page you have text and 3 graphics, totaling 4 elements on your page, and thus being counted as 4 ‘hits’ on your website. When a visitor visits that page once, your statistics will show 1 visitor and 4 hits.
So for most of us, the unique ‘visitors’ is the more accurate statistic to take note of.
Visitor Location: The location tells you what country visitors are coming from. This is important if you’re concerned about your global reach to other countries.
Time of Day Activity: This area of your statistics helps you to determine which days of the week have the most activity, and which time of day is the most active.
Referrals: This section of your statistics will tell you how visitors are getting to your web site. It lists which search engines people use, as well as which keywords or key phrases people use to find your site.
This is good to track any online marketing you are doing. For example if you are paying to list your website on another website then you would want to ensure that you are actually getting visitors from the website to know that your spend is worthwhile.
Pages: This section of your statistics will help you to determine which pages are visited most often, and which page people exit your site from. This will help you know which pages are working and which ones need attention.
Time on Site: This will allow you to see how long the average visitor spends on your website. This will be a good indicator of the health of your website, as if visitors are leaving very quickly then you know that there is something not working! As you add more information and content to your website over time it would be good to see this statistic increase so that your visitors spend more time on your website.
Why is tracking these statistics so important?
If you are truly serious about your online marketing then recording and assessing these metrics is important and will make a huge difference to your results and will likely save you from wasting money on activities that don’t work and help you to focus on those that do. I’d suggest keeping an ongoing record of these statistics (my preferenece would be a simple excel spreadsheet) so you can track the above plus other measurements and how they change over time.
By tracking these metrics over time you will see changes in results depending on what online activities and marketing you are doing. If you didn’t measure a strategy or promotion how would you know if it’s a waste of time or if it is truly working effectively for your business?
If we can assist you with your Online Marketing please contact Web Chameleon today…
