Website Analytics: An Overview Of Traffic Statistics

It has been a while since I last posted. Since most of my readers are SEO or other types of Internet presence managers, I am sure that they and you will understand what it is to be so busy you can barely breathe. With the changes that both Google and Yahoo are implementing it has taken a couple of weeks to install a solid plan for my clients. The key is not to be in reactionary mode all the time, to try and grasp the big picture of what the search engines’ true goals are.

In this case Google’s continued steamrolling into the portal space along with its continued commitment to personalized search, has led me to make severe changes to much of the way I have been displaying content. I am happy to report that the initial results are fantastic!

Traffic Reports and The Art of Analytics

If you are reading this, you probably have a web site or manage one. You also are tracking that websites traffic. If you are not, then I suggest you immediately set up Google Analytics for tracking. Rather than explain how to set up the analytics here, visit my post on Website Usability and Analytics on Active Rain. In the comments of the blog there is a detailed tutorial on how to setup, configure and install Google Analytics.

Analytics is a detailed look at your site visitors, how they got there, and most important: what they are doing on your site! These statistics are usually broken down into different categories:

1. Visitors – these reports focus on your site users. It tracks all visits to the site, and if you don’t have filters installed or configured to eliminate your own company’s IP’s and search engine user agents, it is likely that your stats are skewed. The most important stat is the “unique” visitor. That tells you how many people actually came to your site. It will also tell you if they came back. Visitor loyalty is extremely important. If you have a blog and your loyalty index is below 10% then you might want to consider a writing tutorial. Some analytics programs will also give you visitor tracking within the visitor package. This gives you an idea of where they went on the site, how they entered the site, and where they exited the site. Another important stat is how long they were on any given page, and how long they were on the site.
2. Marketing – these stats make up the second most relevant pieces of info: what keywords the user typed in to reach your site. It will also separate organic from paid clicks. My next couple of posts will be concerned with e-commerce and paid versus organic traffic.
3. Technical – this grouping tells you important facts about your visitors like screen resolution which is important if you have a fixed width website. Knowing the average screen resolution of your visitors tells you if your site might be too wide. Platforms and browser types are also good things to know so you can insure your site is browser compliant. These days cross platform usability isn’t as important as it used to be, since most people are using IE or FireFox anyway and they are both easily updated. Another important stat in this grouping has to do with broken links, 404 error pages and dropped forms. Knowing where your site has problems can help in resolving basic usability issues.

One of the coolest features of Google Analytics is its site overlay. This gives you a clean look at what links on your site users are clicking on to get into your site.

Next up are looks at different types of visitors and how they behave.