Business on the Web:

Tracking Your Traffic

Article by Leslie Shelor

 

You have your web site up and have figured out ways to promote it and start advertising.  How do you figure out what promotion and advertising is effective for your business?  One of the easiest ways to find out who is visiting, or track the traffic for your web site, is to install a web traffic counter. 

 

Many hosting providers already provide a counter for your site.  If you haven't chosen a hosting provider, make sure that they offer a web statistics service before you sign up.  If you've already contracted with a service, check with them to see if they are tracking your traffic.  Often you can find your web statistics though your account's control panel or dashboard.  Sometimes you have to dig around a little to find the information, but in many cases there are reports that tell you what you need to know.

 

There are a few providers out there that don't supply web statistics, but there are many good web counters on the Internet.  The best thing about most of them is that they are free!  All you have to do is insert a little html code into your web site and you can access reports about your web traffic that will help you find out how effective your advertising and promotions have been.  If you don't do your own web design your designer can do this for you, and should have suggested it as part of the original design.

 

My favorite free web site counter is located at http://www.sitemeter.com.  There are many other good ones, of course.  Pick the one that seems the easiest for you to use, and the one that will provide the information that you need for your business.

 

What information do you want to know about your traffic?  That will vary from business to business, but the following items are what I feel is important to know for Greenberry House:

 

1.  How many hits do I get per day or week?  If this number falls off, I know it's time to change something on the web site to perk up interest.  Usually I add items for sale, or new bunny pictures!

 

2.  Where are the hits coming from?  Very important to me, especially if I am paying for advertising on the Internet.  Most web site counters will show you what web site referred the visitor to your site.  You can also usually tell when someone visits from an email link or if they come from a bookmark in their browser.  Referrals from web searches are also shown, and this is helpful when deciding on keywords for your site.

 

3.  Who is visiting my web site?  Also important.  While it's nice to be getting hits from Grandma and Great-Aunt Maude, who you really want to see are customers.  You won't be able to tell who is coming to your site by name and address, of course, but you can tell locations and frequency of visits.  This is helpful if your site promotes a bricks and mortar shop as well; if people are checking in from nearby they might come visit in person!  You could also use location to help in considering advertising and promotions.

 

There are many other statistics that you can find out through your web counter.  Available information includes how long a visitor stays, how many pages are visited and which ones are most popular, the types of browsers used, page views, daily, weekly, monthly and yearly totals and more.  The more you know the better off you are, and you can tailor your web site to meet your customers expectations and get those numbers climbing.  More visitors will add up to more sales!

 

__________________________________

  Leslie Shelor of Greenberry House spins, dyes, raises German Angora rabbits and crochets in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia.  She blogs At the Top of Squirrel Spur and showcases her work on her web page.