The success of any website strategy depends on regularly examining website traffic and analyzing these usage patterns.  It is vitally important to know how many people are looking at the website, how they go to the website, what they do on the website once they’ve reached it, and where and after how long they leave the website.  These are just a few factors that are considered as part of monitoring the usage information on any website.

Our clients receive an automated Email notice once a month with instructions on how to look at their website usage information.  This Email serves as a reminder that the information should be looked at regularly to get the best results out of their website strategy.  We typically review usage information with our clients on a regular basis, but we are always available to go over any of our clients usage information with them as they see fit.  As part of a Search Engine Optimization program, usage information is almost looked at on a daily basis.  The specific goals and plans in your website strategy specifically determine how often the usage information should be examined and also these goals and plans determine which information should be looked at.

Some of the indicators we recommend reviewing on a regular basis include:

Sessions

This indicates how many different people looked at your website in a given time period.

Page Views

This indicates the number of different pages of information that were viewed.  This information is typically higher than sessions because each visitor to the site typically makes more than one page view.  This can vary depending on the type of website you have.  This is a good indication of how much people go through your website and actually use it.  The Page Views on each individual page can also help to determine the popularity of each individual page.  This helps to let you know if visitors are actually getting to the information on your website you may think they are getting to.

Hits

Hits mean nothing in terms of website usage and people.  Hits are used to determine how much of a load the web server that is hosting your website is handling.  A hit actually means a request to the server.  When a user loads a page, the page counts as one hit and each graphic on that page counts as a hit.  Each page has a varying amount of graphics, so the term hits does not correlate at all to the number of people looking at the website or the number of page views for any given website.

Referring URLs

This is a good place to look to determine where your website has been linked from and how many people follow those links to your website.  This can help to determine if your Chamber directory listing is effective or it can help to determine if your Search Engine Optimization strategy is working properly.

Referring Domains

Referring domains mean the domain of the user who is looking at your website.  If you are trying to attract larger corporate customers, this is somewhere you should check regularly.  You should be able to determine if larger companies are looking at your website and what days and times they looked at your website.

Search Terms

This is a vitally important area to check if getting visitors to your website from search engines is part of your strategy.  This area tells you what terms visitors typed in to find your website and how they grouped those terms together.  This is crucial in determining if your visitors are searching the way you think they search.

Click Paths

Click paths tell exactly how visitors travel through your site.  The smaller your website is in terms of number of pages, the fewer click paths there will be on how to navigate through the website.  If your site is large, chances are there are going to be numerous click paths and it could be that everyone takes a different route through the website.  Click paths can confirm that visitors are either traveling through the website in a sequential manner or that they are clicking around randomly from one page to another within the site.

Length of Session

Length of Session determines how long the average person spends on the website.  This is a good indicator of how in depth visitors are using your website.  If you have a large number of sessions but the session time is very low, that may indicate a less effective website than a smaller number of visitors but a higher session time where each visitor spends extra time on several parts of the website while they are visiting.

Entrance Pages and Exit Pages

Entrance pages refer to the pages that visitors start browsing from.  Almost always the main page of the website is the most common entrance page where most visitors begin viewing the site.  The exit page listing tells you where visitors leave the site from.  If the contact page is high on the exit page list, it is generally a good thing because it is believed that the visitors have gotten the phone number or Email address and have actually contacted the company.  If there is a page that is disproportionately high on the exit page listing, it should be examined to see if there are mistakes on that page or if there is something in particular that is driving the user away from the website.

Miscellaneous

There are many other bits and pieces of information available relative to the geography of your visitors and what types of browsers and computers they have as well as numerous other statistics.  Depending on the content on your site and the strategy you are employing, we can help you to determine which specific numbers you should examine and how often you should be examining them.

Please do not hesitate to contact us to review the usage information on your existing site or to help formulate a plan to examine usage information on a site in the planning stages.