How to Read Website Statistics

Knowing how many visitors come to your website per day and per month is essential, especially if your website is for business. Having ready access to these statistics will allow you to control and focus your marketing strategy. Follow these steps to find out how to gather those daily and monthly statistics.

Things You'll Need

• Internet access
• Computer

Instructions

1. Go to your server's homepage. Every website goes through a server in order to be put onto the Web. Log into your server's homepage or, if it's an internal server, to the website component of the server.

2. Log in. From the server homepage, you'll be prompted to enter your username and password. You should have received this when you initially registered with the server. If you don't remember your password, you will usually be given the option of having the password sent to you by email.

3. Find the statistics menu. Once you're logged in, look for the link or menu labeled "Statistics" or "Website Statistics." Click on the link to view your website statistics.

4. Read your statistics. From the "Statistics" link you'll be able to view them in various formats. You'll be able to see how many visitors you have per day, per month and per year. You can also look into things like average clicks, most popular pages viewed, and the average length of viewers' visit.

5. Know what the statistics mean to you. Depending on what the point of your website is, whether it's personal or business, you can use website statistics to improve how well your website performs. Here's what the different statistics mean:
   • "General Statistics" tell you how many visitors your site had within the chosen time frame.
   • "Revenue Tracking" tracks your actual sales.
   • "Campaign Tracking" will track and monitor the performance of a particular advertising campaign.
   • "Conversion Tracking" shows you the numbers for all non-sales conversions, like an email group sign-up or a newsletter subscription.
   • "Time Trends" will tell you about various revenue trends that occur over a select period of time.
   • "Click Paths" shows you the visitors who are currently on your site and how the navigate through it.

Tips & Warnings

• Consider including a counter on your website to keep track of the total number of visitors to your page.

• If your site has thousands of hits each day, consider trying to get advertisers to pay to advertise on your website.

• Remember that some statistic counters count every page view by the same visitor as a new hit.

• Don't repeatedly visit your own website to inflate numbers.