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Understanding what your visitors do on your site is crucial
information, not to mention interesting. If a large majority of your
visitors who proceed to purchase a product leave the site when they
get to a specific page in the order process, you need to know about it.
It could be that the page in question is confusing or hard to use. Fixing
it could increase your sales exponentially. In fact, it is not uncommon
for small website changes in headlines and order processes to result in
a 200%-300% increase in sales. This is just an example; there are
many reasons why you want a detailed analysis of your site visitors.
Most website hosting services offer a stats package that you can
study. If you're not sure where this is, call up your hosting service and
ask them. Statistics are a vital part of tracking your marketing
progress. If you don't have access to website statistics get a package
that can help you in this area. Do not get a counter that just shows
how many visitors you've had. You'll be missing out on vital
information that can help strengthen weaknesses in your site.
A good website hosting service would offer traffic logs that
provide an invaluable insight into the traffic being referred to a web
site from various sources such as search engines, directories and other
links.
Unfortunately, traffic tracking provided by web hosting services is
often in the form of raw traffic log files or other hard-to-comprehend,
cryptic formats. These log files are basically text files that describe
actions on the site. It is literally impossible to use the raw log files to
understand what your visitors are doing. If you do not have the
patience to go through these huge traffic logs, opting for a trafficlogging
package would be a good idea.
Basically two options are available to you and these are: using a
log analysis package or subscribing to a remotely hosted trafficlogging
service. A remotely hosted traffic logging service may be easy
to use and is generally the cheaper option of the two. In fact, you can
get a powerful free tracking tool at: StatCounter.com. Other reliable
tracking programs include WebTrends.com and HitsLink.com.
These services do not use your log files. Typically a small section
of code is placed on any page you want to track. When the page is
viewed, information is stored on the remote server and available in
real time to view in charts and tables form.
A good traffic logging service provides detailed statistics
pertaining to the following:
How many people visit your site?
Where are they from?
How are visitors finding your site?
What traffic is coming from search engines, links from other
sites, and other sources?
What keyword search phrases are they using to find your
site?
What pages are frequented the most - what information are
visitors most interested in?
How do visitors navigate within your web site?
Knowing the answers to these and other fundamental questions is
essential for making informed decisions that maximize the return on
investment (ROI) of your website investment.
The most important aspect of tracking visitors to your website is
analyzing all the statistics you get from your tracking software. The
three main statistics that will show your overall progress are hits,
visitors and page views. Hits are tracked when any picture or page
loads from your server on to a visitor’s browser. Hits, however, can be
very misleading. It is quite an irrelevant statistic for your website.
The statistic that is probably the most important for a website is
Page Views/Visitors. This gives you a good indication of two things.
First, how many people are coming to your site, and secondly how
long are they staying on your site. If you have 250 visitors and 300
page views you can figure that most visitors view one page on your
site and then leave. Generally, if you're not getting 2 page views per
visitor then you should consider upgrading your site's content so your
visitors will stay around longer.
If you see the number of visitors you have increasing as well as
the number of page views per visitor increasing then keep up the good
work! Always look for this stat as an overall barometer of how your
site design is going and if your marketing campaigns are taking hold.
Also, a good stat to look for is unique visitors. Once a person
visits your site they will not be added to the unique visitors category if
they visit again. This is a good way to track new visitors to your
website.
Page views are a good indication of how "sticky" your website is.
A good statistic to keep is Page Views divided by the number of
Visitors you have. This statistic will give you a good idea if your
content is interesting and if your visitors are staying on your site for a
long time and surfing.
Some people are intimidated by web traffic statistics (mostly
because of the sheer volume of data available), but they shouldn't be.
While there are many highly specialized statistics that can be used for
more in-depth web traffic analysis, the above areas alone can provide
invaluable information on your visitors and your website performance.
Remember, this data is available for a reason. It's up to you to use it.
Tracking Your Sales
Like any business, it is absolutely vital to track and maintain your
sales records. You should have a clear understanding of your income
and expenditures.
There are many ways to keep track of your sales. Using orthodox
methods such as keeping a paper journal is time consuming. Simple
spreadsheet programs as well as basic accounting software are
available at minimum or no cost. However, it is advisable to install
advanced accounting software such as QuickBooks, Quicken, or
Microsoft Money to keep track of your accounting.
Such advanced programs save you time by sorting your register
transactions by date, transaction amount, document number (e.g.
check number), order entered, or cleared status. The tracking feature
included in such software tracks, by user, changes made to each
transaction. Daily, weekly, monthly as well as yearly sales reports can
be generated with a few clicks. These reports help you analyze the
sales of each and every product. Logs and reports can be generated to
keep track of all your customers.
NOTE: Affiliate marketing solves many of the aforementioned
tracking problems for you automatically. When you become an affiliate
and resell other company’s products for a profit, the company you are
affiliated with keeps track of your traffic and sales automatically and
presents all this information to you in easy to read charts and graphs.
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