Tracking The Success Of Your Web Site

N ow that you have a web          happening with your site daily,    site and you are trying to      weekly, monthly, or for even       get people to come to it        longer periods.                    and become leads, or sales, or                                           just to use the site, it is vital     The key statistics you want to be  to be able to measure how well        able to track weekly include:      you are doing each week. By                                              watching your web site                1. User Sessions: This is the      statistics, you can gauge how         number of people that came to      well each new change you make to      your site in a given week. Some    the site or to your promotional       statistics programs track the      efforts is working. You can           total number of User Sessions,     reinforce the things that are         which can include multiple         working well and drop the things      sessions from one person, and      that aren't.                          others track unique User                                                 Sessions, meaning they count each  Following Your Statistics             user only once. I personally                                             think total User Sessions is more  It is vital to have a good            valuable as a statistic, because   statistics program to be able to      theoretically you want people to   track the statistics of visits to     keep coming back.                  your site.                                                                                                     2. Page Views: This is the total   Several products I recommend are      number of pages that people        Webtrends, NetTracker, Hitbox         looked at on your web site in a    Professional, LiveStats, and          given period of time. This of      OpenTracker.                          course will always be higher than                                        the User Sessions unless your      By using a good quality program       site only has one page (I would    you can really see what's             hope it has more). Obviously, the  higher the Page Views are in          just from the various search       relation to your User Sessions,       engines.                           the better. That shows that                                              people are staying on your site       4. Page Views by Page: You should  and looking around, not just          check out how many Page Views      coming to your home page and then     each individual page on your site  leaving.                              is getting. This shows how well                                          people are moving around the site  3. Referrals: All the higher          and which pages are attracting     quality statistics programs allow     the most attention. This is        you to see what other web sites       especially important as you put    people are coming to you from.        up new features and new pages and  These could include search            you can see how people are         engines or other sites where          responding to them.                there is a link to your site.                                            This is probably the most             Most programs will show you which  important thing to monitor on         pages most people entered the      your web site, because it shows       site through, and which pages      you how successful your online        they exited the site from. This    marketing actions are.                is important because if you see                                          that most people are coming to     Most quality programs will let        your home page and also exiting    you look at the number of             the site from your home page, it   referrals coming from individual      shows you are not enticing them    web pages (i.e.                       to stay. That tells you that you   http://dir.yahoo.com/Computers_an     need to make the choices on the    d_Internet/Software/), or from        home page more interesting or      domains (i.e. from yahoo.com or       more appealing. You should use     google.com), or you can               market research to tell you what   specifically look at referrals        your public wants, and then use    that information to get them to       accordingly. If you have a web     stay and move around the site.        site and you get leads from it,                                          but you do not sell something      5. Sales: This of course is the       directly online, then you should   most important thing, although        track what dollar value of sales   this is not something the             you get from the leads from your   statistics programs will show         web site.                          you. If you sell a product                                               online, you should graph your         Tracking statistics from your web  online sales weekly and see how       site is vital to your overall      the various actions you are doing     success and should be done at      or changes that you are making        least once a week.                 are contributing to or detracting                                     from sales, and manage                 About the Author: John Eberhard is President of http://RealWebMarketing.net, a marketing consultant, writer and political analyst living in the Los Angeles area. He can be reached via http://www.realwebmarketing.net/contact.html Read more articles by: John Eberhard Article Source: www.iSnare.com