How to Use Your Web Stats – Lesson 1
Do you have too much traffic to your website?
I know, what an odd question, does anyone ever have too much traffic?
Actually, the answer is yes! You could be getting great streams of traffic BUT if they are not converting to sales then you are getting the wrong kind of traffic.
Kind of like an Open House, lots of Lookey-Loos but no cash on the barrel head.
Now is the time to take a look at where your traffic is coming from. Over the next several posts I am going to show you what is important in your Web Stats and how to analyze them to make improvements to your marketing efforts.
a) Log into your hosting account’s C-Panel
b) Click on your Web/FTP Stats.
c) Choose any of the Stat options, however I use Awstats.
Your screen is going to be filled with a world of information but don’t let your eyes cross yet. On the left side of the screen you will see a list of options for calling up the data. For now click on the Summary view.
Take your right hand scroll bar and just start moving down the page. You will see different boxes of information. Here is what to focus on…
Monthly History
Unique Visitors is the number of visitors that came to your site usually within a 24 hour period. If the same person comes back in hour 25 then they are counted again. This is the most important number because it acts truly like a body count.
Number of Visits is the number of visits a Unique Visitor came to your site in that 24 hour period. This is something to keep an eye on because it will show whether a visitor was coming back to your site, perhaps for a second look at the sales letter or because they are comparing your product to others.
Pages are the number of pages the Unique Visitors reviewed. These are not important to our analysis.
Hits is hard to define but it is the number of graphics and items that load when a visitor comes to the page. This is not useful for our marketing purposes.
Bandwidth is the amount of digital traffic your site did in this month. Keep an eye on this as sometimes your webhost only offers you a limited bandwidth and you will have to increase your service level if you cross over your limit.
In the end focus on your Unique Visitors – this number should grow every month. Your PPC campaign, backlinks and search engine ranking will improve this number. Unique Visitors are a direct correlation to the amount of work you are doing in getting traffic to your site.
You will use this number to determine the number of visitors that become buyers of your product; your “conversion rate.” For example…If I have 1,000 Unique Visitors in December and I have 100 sales in December then my conversion rate is 10%.
Any number of 5% is good; anything over 20% is fantastic. (Don’t forget to do the dollars math, 100 sales for a $19.95 product is $1,995 in your pocket!!!)
Work on this number, it will be slow at first but it will improve with effort! When you are first starting an online business these numbers will be small but they will grow, manage them now to get the most out of your traffic.
Check back here in a few days to see more in our series of How to Use Your Web Stats where we will discuss Robot and Spider Visits.
