Home
>
Traffic Building
>
What Do Your Site Statistics Mean, Anyway?

What Do Your Site Statistics Mean, Anyway?

The purpose of analyzing your web site statistics is to look for trends and to research the success level of your marketing campaigns. The numbers themselves can be misleading, as statistical packages count "hits" in different ways. If someone visits a page on your site doesn't mean that they read it completely.

The idea with web site statistics, then, is to look for trends. Instead of looking at the numbers a concrete items, look at them over time to see if they're increasing or decreasing. For example, if you do an internet marketing campaign, then look at your web site statistics to see if the campaign increased the number of hits to your site.

With that said, here are some numbers you should look at:

Visitor Information

There are three areas that are important to review each month and during each marketing campaign. The number of unique visitors will help you to determine whether your site is receiving more or less visitors each month.

The location tells you what country, and sometimes what State, the visitors are coming from. This is important if you're concerned about your global reach to other countries, or if you've done a marketing campaign in other States. Note that this is the State of the ISP where they connected to the Internet. Because AOL is in Virginia, you will have an inordinate amount of Virginia visitors, even though these people are actually all over the USA.

An important distinction is the concept of "visitors" versus "hits". Each person who visits your site is considered a "visitor". Each time a visitor looks at a page, that page and its contents are accessed, including the graphics on the page. As example, say that your home page has two graphics on it, plus some text. That is considered THREE elements on the page. When a visitor visits that page once, your statistics will show ONE visitor and THREE hits.

Time of Day Activity

This area of your statistics helps you to determine which days of the week have the most activity, and which time of day is the most active. This can be helpful to know when to schedule chats and teleclasses. For instance, if Wednesdays at 3PM are popular times for your site, they may be popular times for teleclasses. It's important to note here that one of the most popular times for people to search the web is weekdays after lunch. (People are at work and having a sugar low after digesting their lunch and are surfing the net instead of working.) If this is a popular time for people to be surfing the net, then this might also be a popular time for an internet chat on your web site.

Referrals

This section of your statistics will tell you who is sending people to your web site. It lists which search engines people use, as well as which keywords or key phrases people use to find your site. In addition, this section will also list what other sites are linking from their site to your site. (When someone links from their site to your site, it's called an "inbound link" or "incoming link".)

Pages

This section of your statistics will help you to determine which pages are visited most often, how long people stay on a page (presumably to read it), and which page people exit your site from. Again, trends matter here more than the concrete numbers. Are certain pages more popular than others? Are people only spending 5 seconds on a page that should take 3 minutes to read?

Error reports

This section tells you where people had problems accessing your site. If people try to access a certain page and can't, it will be recorded here. If your site has been unavailable, you'll see these numbers rise.

For a list of all internet error message numbers and they're corresponding meaning, check out this website:

http://www.webopedia.com/quick_ref/error.asp

Conclusion

As you can see, there are many number to look at in your statistics, and many ways to interpret them. If you pay more attention to trends and problems, and less attention to actual numbers, you'll be ahead of the game!

About The Author

? 2004 Karyn Greenstreet.

Karyn Greenstreet is a Self Employment expert and small business coach. She shares tips, techniques and strategies with self-employed people to create and grow their businesses, stay focused and motivated, and perform at their peak. Visit her website at http://www.webopedia.com/quick_ref/error.asp

eco-friendly cleaning service Buffalo Grove ..

In The News:

A new phone return scam targets recent buyers with fake carrier calls. Learn how criminals steal devices and steps to protect yourself from this fraud.

New Anthropic research reveals how AI reward hacking leads to dangerous behaviors, including models giving harmful advice like drinking bleach to users seeking help.

The Fox News AI Newsletter gives readers the latest AI technology advancements, covering the challenges and opportunities AI presents.

Holiday email scams, including non-delivery fraud and gift card schemes, spike in November and December, costing victims hundreds of millions, the FBI says.

Holiday visits offer the perfect opportunity to help older parents with technology updates, scam protection and basic troubleshooting skills for safer digital experiences.

Swiss scientists create grain-sized robot that surgeons control with magnets to deliver medicine precisely through blood vessels in medical breakthrough.

Researchers exploited WhatsApp's API vulnerability to scrape 3.5 billion phone numbers. Learn how this massive data breach happened and protect yourself.

Travel companies share passenger data with third parties during holidays, but travelers can protect themselves by removing data from broker sites and using aliases.

Xpeng's humanoid robot moves so realistically that crowds believed it was fake, marking a major advancement in robotics technology ahead of 2026 commercial launch.

Researchers discover phishing scam using invisible characters to evade email security, with protection tips including password managers and two-factor authentication.

iPhone and Android users can reduce battery drain and data usage by restricting Background App Refresh to Wi-Fi connections instead of mobile networks.

Scammers nearly stole an Apple account by exploiting the support system with authentic-looking tickets and phone calls, users can protect themselves with safety steps.

FoloToy restored sales of its AI teddy bear Kumma after a weeklong suspension following safety group findings of risky and inappropriate responses to children.

Threat intelligence firm Synthient uncovers one of the largest password exposures ever, prompting immediate security recommendations.

Viral video shared by Elon Musk shows Tesla's Optimus humanoid robots performing tasks from cooking to construction, garnering over 58.5 million views on social media.

Chinese hackers used Anthropic's Claude AI to launch autonomous cyberattacks on 30 organizations worldwide, marking a major shift in cybersecurity threats.

Apple's new Sleep Score feature gives you a rating for your nightly rest quality. Learn how to set it up on your Apple Watch and iPhone today.

Essential phone settings to enable before losing your device, including Find My network, location services and security features for iPhone and Android.

The Fox News AI Newsletter gives readers the latest AI technology advancements, covering the challenges and opportunities AI presents.

Cybersecurity research shows weak passwords remain a major threat, with simple patterns and number sequences putting millions of accounts at risk.

New Android malware BankBot YNRK silences phones, steals banking data and drains crypto wallets automatically. Learn how this advanced threat works.

FDA approves first human trial for Paradromics' brain-computer interface that could restore speech for paralyzed patients through neural technology.

New phishing platform QRR targets Microsoft 365 users across 1,000 domains in 90 countries. Learn how to spot fake login pages and protect your accounts.

OpenTable now uses AI to track your dining habits and share insights with restaurants. Learn what data they collect and how to protect your privacy.

Google's discontinued Nest thermostats still secretly upload home data to company servers despite losing smart features, raising serious privacy concerns.

What Do Your Site Statistics Mean, Anyway?

Traffic Building