Yesterday we held an informational session to discuss the importance of analyzing your web statistics. Regular analysis of website statistics is essential to continuing the improvement of your website and allows you to determine the effectiveness of your website. For those of you who could not attend Informatics U, here is a high-level summary of the importance of web statistics.
Web Statistics Can Tell You
- How many visitors you get to your site
- What they are interested in
- Where they are coming from
- How you can be more strategic
Metrics You Should Know
- Visits: The total number of times people have visited your website.
- Page Views: The total number of views for all of the pages on your website.
- Top Pages: The number of views each page on your site receives, revealing which pages are the most popular.
- Hits: The number of successful connections to a web site. Not to be confused with a visit. A hit is every connection.
- Page Bounces: See which pages people are arriving on and immediately leaving from.
- Referring Sites:The top sites referring traffic to your site via links.
- Keywords: Words and phrases that are leading visitors to your site.
- Entry and Exit Pages: Which landing page are people entering your site through? Which landing pages are they leaving from?
- Spiders and Bots: Automated programs that search and index websites, usually with the intent of providing information for search engines.
- Demographics:The qualities (location, age, sex) of your site’s specific visitors.
All web stats packages are different but they generally reveal these key metrics. We recommend choosing 3-5 that are of interest to you and really getting to know them. If you need help with your web statistics, Informatics can provide assistance and ongoing monitoring of your stats. If you do not currently have a web stats package, contact us to get set up.
