Properly Analyzing Your Website Traffic For Internet Marketing Optimization

Most every website hosting company provides its customers with basic site statistics and traffic data, which webmasters will then have to interpret and make pertinent use of. For the average developer, this information can seem overwhelming if you don’t understand how to properly interpret and apply it to your particular industry and website. The first step is analyzing the basic data of the average visitors to your site daily. These figures are typically the most accurate measure of your websites’ activity.The first common misconception is that the more visitors your site receives, the better your website is doing. You must however take into account the behavior of your visitors once they land on your website to effectively gauge the success of your site.The second common misconception is that the term hits equates to how many visitors your site has received. The term hits actually represents the number of information requests that are received by your hosting server. For example, if you have 5 graphics on a given page, one visitor to that specific page would tally up 5 hits on your websites’ server. As with most statistics, the more people (or visitors) involved, the more accurate the trends and results become. Alternatively, the smaller the amount of visitors, the more a few random browsers can distort the overall analysis. The ultimate goal is find out how well or how poorly your website is working for your visitors.The first place to investigate is the average duration in which your visitors stay on your website. If the average visitor enters and exits in less than 30 seconds, there are some underlying issues to resolve. Are your keywords targeting the wrong audience? Are your graphics slow to load, confusing or missing? Focus on fixing these issues, then continue to analyze your repairs for effectiveness.The second place to investigate is your websites’ exit pages, or what pages your visitors are typically exiting from. If you see a common exit point trend on a specific page that is not intended to be an exit point, it’s a clear indicator that page needs attention. Consider improving the useability, copywriting or graphics on this page. Not every visitor will find what they are looking for, so your analysis will include various exit points. If however you notice that visitors are spending more time on pages you consider to be less important, you may consider transferring some of your sales copy and marketing to that given page.The third place to investigate is your keywords and keyword phrases. The more targeted the keyword phrase, and ultimately, the visitor, the more valuable the particular keyword is. If you find that a large number of your visitors are browsers and not buyers or leads, then your keyword targeting demands attention. Keywords are the single most important aspect of your website in bringing quality, targeted visitors to your site who are actively searching for your products and/or services. Close analysis and research of your chosen keywords will give you a clear understanding of your visitors’ motivations.As you already know, these critical website statistics will reveal vital information about the overall effectiveness of your website, as well as individual pages, and your visitors’ ultimate motivations. This is essential information for any internet marketing campaign.