Web Statistics: What You Don’t Know Can Hurt You

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Web Statistics: What You Don’t Know Can Hurt You

Did you know: What you don’t know about website statistics CAN hurt, or at least hamper your business?

If you were told, for example, that your website got 6,000 hits last month, would you be concerned or pleased? After all, 6,000 hits seems like quite a bit doesn’t it?

Did you know that a mere 60 visitors could generate 6,000 hits quite easily in any given month depending on how your website is constructed?

A-Ha! Suddenly the stats aren’t as impressive anymore are they? 60 visitors per month work out to only 2 visitors a day when you really think about it. But, that’s not all. What if those two visitors were really 1 person who came at two different times during the day meaning only 1 real person came to visit that day? Now it looks like you could be getting as little as 30 real visitors per month. Now, what if you don’t even know how many (if any) visitors are coming to your website?

It’s true. What you don’t know about your web traffic statistics really can hurt you.

What are Web Traffic Statistics and Why You Need Them

Basically, Web Traffic Statistics is data collected about visitors to your website. When set up and analyzed correctly, they can give you massive insight into the needs of your customers, give you the numbers you need to make educated changes to fill those needs, and enough information to be able to identify and correct problem areas on your website.

MYTH: Hits are a good way to measure the success of your website.

FACT: Years ago, it was enough to know that your website got “hits” because web pages weren’t overly complicated. With advanced technology and multiple images used to create many web pages today, hits are no longer an accurate way to measure the success of your website.

Hits are actually how many times a file is requested from your website. This means that if the web page your visitor lands on is constructed of 50 little images, and some other external files needed to display the web page correctly, then 2 visits at 2 different times in 24 hours from this 1 visitor is enough to generate over 100 hits.

What You Need to Know About Web Traffic Statistics

While there are many things to learn about Web Traffic Statistics, to make a wise choice that will benefit your company long-term, you should arm yourself with this basic information:

1) Decide what metric(s) you need to improve in order to accomplish goals you’ve set out for your business website.

2) Evaluate the scope of your business. Are you a large, established company with a very loyal customer base who needs a more sophisticated and industrial strength tracking system? Are you a smaller company that requires a more basic, affordable solution?

3) Evaluate Resources. Statistics are just statistics if there is no one there to dig in and analyze the numbers. Do you have a marketing department that can analyze the data? Will you hire an outside company to analyze them or will you be doing this yourself?

Having this information before you get started researching a solution will allow you to match the right analytics software with the needs and capabilities of your company. You’ll be able to confidently ask any solution provider, “These are the needs and abilities of my company. Can you demonstrate with real-life examples, how your product will help me accomplish this affordably and effectively?”

How to Get Started

The Good News: Web Traffic Analytics doesn’t have to be expensive. Google has given site owners a free tool called Google Analytics which was originally a paid website traffic statistics program.

Don’t let the price tag fool you though. Google Analytics is loaded with tons of features and reports; many of which you probably won’t use or need but it’s customizable enough so it can be made to display only reports about the metrics that matter to your business. It can even be configured to send out an automatic report daily, weekly, or monthly to whatever email address you choose.

The Bad News: It takes a little bit of technical experience to get it set up and working correctly. If you know a bit about programming websites and a little about marketing, set up & configuration shouldn’t be too difficult.

In the end, you’ll have a very sophisticated website statistics tool which, if you’re a small to medium sized business, will likely be a good match for your needs.

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