2005 Web Statistics - How Did Your Web Site Do?  If you were asked today how is your Web site doing - could you give a statistical answer (or just a general statement)? Most Web sites come with lots of statistics and you could actually easily spend hours (daily) analyzing these stats. But what are the important statistics and what should you focus on...
We have identified below the main statistics that BeareWare uses to help analyze a client's site. We recommend that you check your statistics at least once a month. A point of reference on analyzing statistics is that a "Visitor" is our primary and starting measuring unit. You will have heard the expression "hits" as a statistical reference to Web sites in the past. If ever someone was attempting to sell you advertising based on a Web site (or emphasize how busy their Web site is), the "hit" terminology can be used in a very confusing manner to inflate the activity on the website. To clarify - here is Webopedia's description of a hit: A Hit - "The retrieval of any item, like a page or a graphic, from a Web server. For example, when a visitor calls up a Web page with four graphics, that's five hits, one for the page and four for the graphics. For this reason, hits often aren't a good indication of Web traffic." In other words - hits are based on the number of visitors times the graphics (or other files, such as audio or video) that exist on a page within a site (with the page itself counting as an additional "hit"). Most Web sites owners care about visitors - as a visitor can buy a product, review a service, or follow up with a call to your organization. A great analogy was given to me by my hairdresser ("Bubba") recently when discussing this exact topic. He stated that hits would be equivalent to how many hairs he cut in a day (not how many heads). If he wanted to impress an associate he could claim to have cut 10,000 hairs on a given day - but in reality it would be the number of heads (people) that paid for a hair cut that would produce his bottom line results. Here are the key statistics we recommend you review on a periodic basis. Now that 2006 is in the history books, this is a GREAT TIME to check your statistics and see how your Web site did! - Web Site Visitor Stats, Daily, Weekly, Monthly
- Visits Duration
- Viewed Pages
- Referring Search Engines
- Referring Web Sites
- Key Phrases & Words
- Direct leads and e-Commerce results
- General Statistic Guidelines
The following statistics are available on each BeareWare Web site. Each item (blue hyperlink) will give you a statistic. Here are the basics the we would recommend to check on a periodic basis to monitor and track your Web site results. As you get more familiar with looking at stats and making adjustment and marketing decisions based on them, you can expand what you look at. Web Site Visitor Summary: Summary for the current day, week and month (and previous months). Provides information on visitors (new and repeat visitors), pages visited, number of hits, & bandwidth. Your key summary is the visitors statistic, which lets you know how many people are coming to your Web site (and how many are repeating visits). Visits Duration: Visit duration tells you how long a visitor actually stayed on your Web site. Time measurement sare 0-30 seconds, 2 minutes-5 minutes, 5 minutes-15 minutes, 15 minutes-30 minutes, 30 minutes-1 hour, and then 1 hour plus. This statistic is absolute eye openers about the general behavior of visitors to your site. If your Web site's current information (content) is not up-to-date, or it is difficult to find information, chances are the visits will be in the 0-30 second range. Good sites with rich information should experience 2-5 minutes or above. Either way, understanding visitation duration can really help you make adjustments and enhancements to the site. Viewed Pages: This statistic tells you what specific pages are being viewed by visitors to your Web site. It also tells you the amount of times - so you can establish what your key pages on your Web site are - as well as what key pages you have that people are not visiting (and appropriately analyze why.). Viewed pages also includes entry page statistics (the first page they went to - which is quite often not your home page if they are taken there via a search engine) and also the page on which they exited your Web site (which can sometimes hint at a page that is out of date or lacks any key information). Referring Search Engines: Search Engines are a key opportunity to get visitors to your Web site. There are many things that can be done to ensure you have a prominent listing on a search engine - but knowing which search engines are producing the most referrals can help with your search engine strategy. This stat will show the percentage of referrals. Of course, there are lots of other methods to get visitors to your Web site (word of mouth, general advertising) but this stat really helps reinforce the power of the Internet. These search engines have robots that search the Internet and establish key phrases and words that describe your site. You can also submit these phrases and words to the search engine directly to improve your chances of appearing on a search. Referring Web Site: Referring web sites are what we consider "word of mouth" online. This is the stat that shows you which specific Web site the visitor found out about you on (and actually took the link on that site to get to you). Online advertising is the primary method that sends visitors to other Web sites, but key links are also a good way to get additional traffic. Usually there will have to be a key relationship or benefit to have your organization linked on another site, but there is no doubt that getting your Web site's link on other Web sites can help grow your business. Search engines list valid links to a website as key parameter for search engine rankings. Key Phrases & Words: Being listed on a search engine is not enough to ensure that people will find you on key phrase and word searches. Your Web site will have "meta tags" which are tags that the Web robots will look for that help describe your Web site for search engine searches (BeareWare works with clients to establish these and then update periodically). Adding these phrases and key words to the search engine directly and also in your title line on each page will also help in searching. This statistic tells you which are the primary key phrases and words visitors used to search for your site. If there is an obvious key word or phrase that is not listed here - then you would make sure it is added to your meta tags and search engines to optimize your returns. Primary Measurements - e-Commerce & Direct Leads: As well as the statistical package that BeareWare hosting currently offers, there are primary measurements that your site produces that most clients are in tune with. Onlineshops & e-Commerce Custom forms/systems such as online shops, direct leads, e-NEWS subscribers, memberships, or event registration gives website owners primary measurement results and quite often the bottom line results on a website. But don't forget it is your every day statistics that lead to these e-Commerce & Direct Leads results. So we don't feel it is enough to simply understand your measurements - but your key statistics to ensure your website maximizes its results and returns for you. ** BeareWare Client Statistics are available for 2006. To link to your statistics please go to Customer Corner and select the statistics topic. Your username and password can be obtained by contacting BeareWare at
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