How to Analyze Your Web Site's Traffic

Your traffic is consistently going up, but it is possible that your income is not rising along with it. It may even be dropping. Traffic analysis is important. Crucial to a site's success or failure in the long-term is determining where your surfers are coming from, what they are doing on your web site and why.

How do you take this information and turn it into something you can use? Why is it even important at all, many will ask? Knowledge is power and, with the right pieces of information, you can refine your web site to suit your visitors and increase your overall income by knowing who your users are.

Things You'll Need

• Traffic tracking software
• Time scheduled for regular review
• A good grasp of what each number means and a use for those numbers

Instructions

1. You must use some sort of traffic tracking software. Many hosting providers already have this in place, and programs are often included within the hosting package you purchased. If you are not sure, contact your provider and ask for details on traffic tracking or traffic logs.

2. Do not simply look at the bottom number and end your research there. Review all of the parameters available. This will give you a good overview of who your users are.

3. Pay attention to the country of origin of most of your surfers. If the majority are coming from Asian countries and your web site is written entirely in English, you may want to consider other options to accommodate those users.

4. How long does each visitor stay at your site? Almost every tracking system includes this category, and it is very important to know if you are keeping your users' attention, or if they are simply clicking in and then clicking out because your site contains nothing of interest to them.

5. What is the originating inbound traffic source? If they came via a search engine or some other organic link, you want to know which ones are the most productive. Then you can focus on maintaining those links as well as developing similar inbound links from similar web sites.

6. Separate the statistics for the known sources that were paid sources. Analyze this traffic entirely separately from your organic sources, if possible. Determine how effective your advertising and placement campaigns are and whether you should continue to allocate money to these resources based on the traffic as well as on the comparison to actual conversion and sales ratios.

Tips & Warnings

• Stay focused. Traffic analysis is fascinating, and some of the extra factors that many of the programs track are truly amazing. However, it is really easy to become sidetracked by these numbers and to lose sight of why you are reviewing your traffic in the first place.

• Remember, you are running a business. These numbers represent actual people all over the world that are visiting your web site. Knowing their actions while on your web site can be a real edge in shaping your business and maximizing your income.

• Self-discipline is a must. It is really easy to lose a whole day looking at your numbers and really not accomplishing anything. Stay focused on the reason you are reviewing them.