Comprehensive website Traffic Analysis

Flow

We all know the importance of monitoring and analyzing web site traffic, but there still seems to be a lot of confusion in determining the importance and stability of statistical indicators, and I would like to clarify some vague concepts and explain why they are not correct in the following analysis.

The most popular term for Web site traffic statistics may be "click", and I think the understanding of clicks is only preliminary. By definition, click is the server in order to send a Web page must meet the request of all individuals, in addition to the basic HTML should also add pictures or sound files. As you can see, the number of clicks is relatively insignificant, especially when there are several pictures or multimedia files on a Web page.

Page browsing is more meaningful, but because of its inherent flaws, it is still not accurate enough. Page browsing is the sum of the number of pages that visitors actually see through the browser.

There are two main problems with either clicking or page browsing:

(1) Catch

Let's assume that a visitor is browsing a Web page on your site, after a short period of time browsing the same Web page, it is likely to see the browser's cache content, rather than the site's information (because read cached content faster), the browser's ISP also has a cache, Especially in the case of using proxy server is more obvious, this phenomenon directly leads to the untrue results of statistics.

(2) Spiders or Bots

As the above name shows, the purpose of designing these software is to crawl on the Web, catalogue the pages, collect email addresses or other information, which are recorded as clicks, even if you can build a database that does not record these IP addresses, but these IP address lists are changing every day, it is difficult to accurately record.

Computing unique visitors will be a bit more reliable, if the use of IP address and/or the combination of cookies is more obvious, if you try to calculate how many visitors form a purchase, then this information has its real value, the disadvantage is that many people each time the IP address is different, And some people turn off the browser's cookies function.

As a result, no statistical indicators can fully reflect the audience all the information, many even just rough estimates, to comprehensively evaluate the effectiveness of the site, there are many factors to consider. The most important of these factors are analyzed below.

--Submit URL

This information reflects the source of visitors, such as links from other sites or search engines, if visitors from the search engine, most of the submission URL information can even tell you a visitor in search engines used keywords, analysis of the keywords visitors use for the site to create and submit to the search engine is very important.

--Home Page view number

Although many people do not come to your site through the homepage, most people usually go to the homepage, so the home page view can be used to measure the overall situation of the visitor.

--The main entry page

If you know which pages people use most often to get to the site, you can optimize and maintain them, and you can apply the meta tags of those pages to pages that enhance visitor impressions and increase sales directly.

--The main departure page

Understanding the information about visitors leaving the site can help improve the design of these pages and even remove them.

--average stay time for each visit

By analyzing the average stay time of each visit, many valuable conclusions can be drawn, and if many visitors leave your site within 20-30 seconds, it may be because the page is downloading too slowly, may be due to poor content or other design flaws, on the other hand, If you find that many visitors stay on some pages for a long time, you may want to improve on other pages.

--most or least of the access pages

Understanding why people originally came to the site or why they stayed on your site is necessary, and the analysis of the most or least visited pages helps further improve the design strategy of the site.

--Peak Daily visit

All sites need to be maintained and updated, and it is best to update the site content before the peak visit.

--What browsers do visitors use

While most Web pages do not make a fundamental difference in Netscape or Internet Explorer, you may find that site traffic is performing better in one browser, using this phenomenon to optimize the design features of the browser, and we have seen the importance of the above statistics, Next, I'll introduce a few web sites that provide related services.

--extreme Tracking

The site provides tracking statistics for all of the above information, and even more services such as quick Create, unlimited URL real-time tracking, fully functional free version (additional criteria: placing a small logo on each page you want to track), and everyone can view your stats by clicking on the logo. If you don't want people to see your information (not displaying icons), you can pay 5 dollars a month.

Website URL http://www.extreme-dm.com

--web Site Traffic

After filling out a simple form for registration on the site, they will send you an HTML code (only 2 lines), and the station will send you a free web site Traffic report at the last minute of the day, including daily statistics, site traffic, and detailed information for each visitor.

Web site http://www.websitetrafficreport.com

--the Counter

With free services and no need to attach a display icon, statistics, although not comprehensive, still provide a lot of important information.

URL: http://www.thecounter.com

--web Stat

The service is very reliable, provide 30 days trial, if pay 5 dollars a month, also can get more service content.

Web site http://www.web-stat.com

--web Site Tracker

The station provides free service and does not need to display banner on your Web page, and can count a lot of information, such as visitor geographic area (by country), IP address, browser, submitting URL, average number of clicks per hour, etc.

Web site http://www.websitetracker.com

--web Trends

The software is quite expensive compared to free services (350 dollars), but it can provide unmatched tracking and reporting options.

Web site http://www.webtrends.com

Through the above introduction, I hope you have a clear understanding of the website analysis and the necessary tools, the website analysis process may be complex and tedious, but the analysis of data for the successful operation of the site is critical.