Analyzing Website Traffic

Analyzing your lacework traffic statistics obligatoriness show an invaluable
tool for a character of contradistinctive reasons. But before you rap
fabricate full habit of this tool, you urgency to follow how to
interpret the data.

Most mesh hosting companies will add you shadow basic lattice
traffic tip that you inasmuch as keep to interpret and
put together pertinent avail of. However, the data you redeem from
your host company power steward wild if you don ' t
seize how to advance honest to your particular calling and
website. Contract ' s flying start by examining the most basic data - the
average visitors to your site on a daily, newspaper, and
swindle sheet basis.

These figures are the most accurate measure of your
website ' s motion. Unaffected would pop in on the surface that the
spare traffic you heed recorded, the improved you contract assume
your website is combat, but this is an not working
perception. You occasion further look-see at the behavior of your
visitors once they come to your website to accurately gauge
the aptitude of your site.

Know onions is generally a humongous muddle about what is commonly
published owing to " hits " and what is absolutely compelling, level
traffic to your site. Hits smartly means the unit of
notice requests obvious by the server. If you envision
about the fact that a hit can simply equate to the number
of graphics per page, you will get an idea of how overblown
the concept of hits can be. For example, if your homepage
has 15 graphics on it, the server records this as 15 hits,
when in reality we are talking about a single visitor
checking out a single page on your site. As you can see,
hits are not useful in analyzing your website traffic.

The more visitors that come to your website, the more
accurate your interpretation will become. The greater the
traffic is to your website, the more precise your analysis
will be of overall trends in visitor behavior. The smaller
the number of visitors, the more a few anomalous visitors
can distort the analysis.

The aim is to use the web traffic statistics to figure out
how well or how poorly your site is working for your
visitors. One way to determine this is to find out how long
on average your visitors spend on your site. If the time
spent is relatively brief, it usually indicates an
underlying problem. Then the challenge is to figure out
what that problem is.

It could be that your keywords are directing the wrong type
of visitors to your website, or that your graphics are
confusing or intimidating, causing the visitor to exit
rapidly. Use the knowledge of how much time visitors are
spending on your site to pinpoint specific problems, and
after you fix those problems, continue to use time spent as
a gauge of how effective your fix has been.

Additionally, web traffic stats can help you determine
effective and ineffective areas of your website. If you
have a page that you believe is important, but visitors are
exiting it rapidly, that page needs attention. You could,
for example, consider improving the link to this page by
making the link more noticeable and enticing, or you could
improve the look of the page or the ease that your visitors
can access the necessary information on that page.

If, on the other hand, you notice that visitors are
spending a lot of time on pages that you think are less
important, you might consider moving some of your sales
copy and marketing focus to that particular page.

As you can see, these statistics will reveal vital
information about the effectiveness of individual pages,
and visitor habits and motivation. This is essential
information to any successful Internet marketing campaign.

Your website undoubtedly has exit pages, such as a final
order or contact form. This is a page you can expect your
visitor to exit rapidly. However, not every visitor to your
site is going to find exactly what he or she is looking
for, so statistics may show you a number of different exit
pages. This is normal unless you notice a exit trend on a
particular page that is not intended as an exit page. In
the case that a significant percentage of visitors are
exiting your website on a page not designed for that
purpose, you must closely examine that particular page to
discern what the problem is. Once you pinpoint potential
weaknesses on that page, minor modifications in content or
graphic may have a significant impact on the keeping
visitors moving through your site instead of exiting at the
wrong page.

After you have analyzed your visitor statistics, it ' s time
to turn to your keywords and phrases. Notice if particular
keywords are directing a specific type of visitor to your
site. The more targeted the visitor - meaning that they
find what they are looking for on your site, and even
better, fill out your contact form or make a purchase - the
more valuable that keyword is.

However, if you find a large number of visitors are being
directed - or should I say misdirected - to your site by a
particular keyword or phrase, that keyword demands
adjustment. Keywords are vital to bringing quality visitors
to your site who are ready to do business with you. Close
analysis of the keywords your visitors are using to find
your site will give you a vital understanding of your
visitor ' s needs and motivations.

Finally, if you notice that users are finding your website
by typing in your company name, break open the champagne!
It means you have achieved a significant level of brand
recognition, and this is a sure sign of burgeoning success.

What businesses are succeeding on the Net?

This week we will address the most basic question anyInternet business owner will have to answer at one point oranother…”what should I sell?”.
After the settling down of the dot-com bubble, sanity checkshave brought realistic expectations to the fore. Initially,a backlash was seen, forecasting the doom of the Internet.Finally, merits have made the Internet gain its rightfulplace. In breakthroughs that show the promise of e-commercewasn't all smoke and mirrors, four dot-coms recentlyreported their first quarterly profits. The list of theInternet’s publicly held moneymakers includes eBay Inc.,Amazon.com Inc., Yahoo! Inc., Overture Services Inc.,Expedia Inc., FindWhat.com Inc. and E-Trade Group Inc. Several privately owned dot-coms, including search enginesGoogle and DealTime, say they have been making money, too.
In 2001, the last full year where numbers are available, theDepartment of Commerce broke out e-commerce sales versustotal U.S retail sales which revealed the $3.16 trillionretail industry saw a total of $37.7 billion in sales takeplace online -- comprising 1.2 percent of the total. Thisyear e-commerce is tracking about the same. Through thethird quarter, the last full quarter where numbers areavailable, total retail sales were $856 billion versus $11billion in e-commerce, about a 1.3 percent share.
There were big gains made in Home and Garden, a 78 percentincrease; Furniture and Appliances, a 75 percent increase;and Toy shopping online with a 61 percent increase in theyear 2002. There is no doubt that online shopping isgrowing.
Nielsen//NetRatings found that more than 35.5 million U.S.Internet users made shopping trips to virtual departmentstore sites during the week ending November 3, 2002 - that'sa 20 percent increase from the week ending October 20 androughly 14 million more than almost the same time period in2001.
There is a growing tendency amongst Internet users to payfor valuable content online. There are many reasons forthis. First, only a few websites operated by big companiescan afford to provide valuable content without beingcompensated. The rest of us can't be so generous. And tryingto recapture our expenses by selling advertising on ourwebsites has failed to pay the bills. Online advertising andclick-through rates are on the decline.
Second, many people are now more than willing to pay toreceive quality services and products even if they wereoffered for free earlier. Several paid content websites havealready proven this unmistakable trend. The discerning buyervalues his/her time as also the quality of information orservice and is willing to pay for it.
However, not all products can be sold on the Internet. Someproducts may be better suited for online sales than others;others simply will not work on this new commercial medium.According to an Ernst and Young study, the most popularonline purchases are computer related products (40%), books(20%), travel (16%), clothing (10%), recorded music (6%),subscriptions (6%), gifts (5%) and investments (4%).
Businesses offering paid services have also prosperedenormously. The top three categories (BusinessContent/Investment, Entertainment/Lifestyles andPersonals/Dating) accounted for 62% of all paid contentrevenues in the first three quarters of 2002. The totalmarket for paid online content in the U.S. grew to $361.4million for the quarter, a 14 percent gain over the previousquarter and a 105.3 percent gain over Q3 2001. Aninteresting statistic put forward by this report is that 85%of money spent by U.S. Consumers for online content goes tothe top 50 sites in most of the categories.
The graph below (Top 3 Content Categories) is indicative ofthis change.
In terms of “stickiness” of different categories, Businesssites - especially finance and investment rank the highest.In other words, users are more likely to spend longer timesurfing through a business website compared to othercategories. This study was conducted by Nielsen//NetRatings.The table below shows the most addictive web categories for2002.
Category Time per person(hr:min:sec) AudienceBusiness – Finance and Investment 0:21:33 51,586General News 0:15:47 64,822Entertainment 0:14:32 45,922
Source: Nielsen//NetRatings
According to the above figures a person spends about 22minutes on a finance website on an average.
Should you be selling a product or a service?
The Internet is primarily used to communicate, entertain,educate and research. It is thus no wonder thatnonperishable, information-intensive products - includingcomputers and software, books, travel, consumer electronics,magazine subscriptions - are the most popular onlineproducts at present. Content-rich sites, subscription-basedsites to advertiser-supported sites focusing on a wide rangeof topics, have been sprouting all over the Internet.
Services such as hotel reservation, air travel andinvestments have successfully translated themselves to theInternet.
Unique services such as Online driving schools have beenprospering. Some states in the US have set up online paymentsites for Government services. Residents of a state can logon to a common site to pay all bills and other expenses,such as parking tickets to the local/County courts.
However, all kinds of services cannot be run entirely on theInternet. The Internet is less effective when face-to-faceselling is needed to close a deal. The Internet can givelots of preliminary information that's useful in setting thescene for the closing. But the actual closing takes placeoffline - i.e., not on the Internet.
Products can also be marketed and sold successfully on theInternet. The kinds of products and services that sell beston the Internet are those that take advantage of theconvenience of the Net. Remember that convenience is theprimary reason why consumers flock to the Internet in thefirst place. People can shop any hour of the day at anysite. They can avoid crowded stores, irritating salesclerks, and even avoid pickpockets.
Offbeat or unusual products and services often attractonline attention and sell strongly. You would generally nottry to sell items people can get at the corner store. Thus,few toothbrushes are sold on the Net; the same thing withdaily food and beverage purchases. But special cheeses, rarecigars, Turkish plates, long-aged wines, even diamonds, canand do sell on the Net.
Most products sold by catalog and mail order also sell wellon the Net. However, people tend to buy only those productsthat could be shipped at a reasonable price. Higher shippingcosts diminish the price competitiveness of online productsand turns-off a lot of potential buyers. In fact, highshipping costs is the primary factor that discourages peoplefrom buying online more than any other single reason. AnErnst and Young report shows that 53 percent of onlineshoppers are concerned with shipping costs that are toohigh, compared to only 19 percent who are concerned withcredit cards being stolen.
As an online merchant, you have to work out the advantagesas well as disadvantages of selling either products orservices. However, in the recent past, online services haveknown to flourish. Nevertheless, if you chose to sellproducts you need to rethink your product offering if thetotal costs of the product and the shipping are higher thanwhat is offered elsewhere.
Take some time to evaluate your products or services. Thereis a growing market of potential customers on the Internet,you just need to offer the products and services they arelooking for.

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