Traffic Analysis, a.k.a. Counter-Stalking
Skeptics will probably starting reading this with the notion that traffic analysis is completely irrelevant and page hits are all that matter. Well, sorry to say this, but they couldn’t be more wrong.
First of all, let’s give a little explanation about what page hits really are. People often think that a page hit is an individual paying a visit to the site. Well, sorry to say this, but that’s just plain wrong. Page hits are simply the number of files that have been requested from a server. This means that if a page has an external stylesheet, external JavaScript, or images on it, then all of them get counted as hits (and let’s not forget the hit for the HTML page itself). Thus, a single visitor can generated many hits, not just one.
Now, the real stuff one should be paying attention to when analyzing traffic is bounce rate, number of unique visitors, return visitors, page views, and referrers. You might be asking yourself, ‘How am I supposed to find out all this stuff?’. Well, there are many tools that are wonderful for this such as, Google Analytics, Mint, and CrazyEgg. I’m not going to go in depth about these tools. I’m just merely recommending a few tools that make traffic analysis easier.
- Bounce Rate
- Bouncing is when someone visits a site and leaves immediately or shortly thereafter. It’s important to analyze this because if you have a high bounce rate (a bounce rate of 50% is average and actually pretty good) that means that the pages people are getting referred to when they first visit the site don’t have enough to grab the users attention or the content isn’t interesting and engaging enough.
- Unique Visitors
- The number of different visitors to a site. Another important bit to monitor because it gives you an indication as to how far and wide your message is getting spread.
- Return Visitors
- Visitors that keep coming back to the site. This is equally as important as unique visitors because it lets you know if your content is interesting or relevant enough for that particular visitor to keep coming back for more.
- Page Views
- The amount of times a particular page gets viewed. This is good to pay close attention to because this statistic lets you know what portions of your site are getting the most attention. This could encourage you to start writing more content about that particular subject.
- Referrers
- Tells what sites are referring users to your site. This is useful because it lets you know how well your marketing campaigns are working. Also, it lets you know what inbound links and search terms end up netting you the most page views.
These are just some of the fundamental aspects of traffic analysis that can help determine the success of your site. There is so much more that you can analyze to further improve your site’s success. The tools I listed above are great because they help you with all this and more.
Tags: Bounce Rate, Hits, Traffic Analysis
