Many website owners either ignore or don’t know how to properly read their website statistics. A superficial glance usually ends on the number of visitors and hits, but there’s much more to your web stats than that. Indeed, if used correctly, your website statistics could be one of the most important tools in building your online business.
Most of the top hosting providers offer free statistics applications already installed on your server such as Webalizer or AWStats. But there are also free services you can use, for example Google Analytics, that can be very easy installed on your website.
For most internet users the free solution should be good enough, however if you planning to get the most of your stats, go for the commercial option which will provide user-friendly useful tools like targeted reports and graphs for just a few euros per month.
Reading your statistics will allow you to see your users computer and browser profiles and their countries of origin, as well as your traffic sources and – very importantly – the average time spent on your site and exit links.
Based on this information, you can ensure that your website is displaying correctly for all your visitors, and discover and eliminate problems with your web pages which will lead to growing page views and longer stays on your website.
For example if you notice that most of users exit your site’s e-commerce section from the checkout page, there could be something wrong. You may be missing a lot of sales not even knowing about it, and all because of some silly issue.
You should review your statistics at least once a month, and modify your site based on analysis to create the perfect website for all your visitors.
Be consistent and all that hard work will definitely pay off.
Next time I will highlight some important things to know from your web statistics.
Marcin Kulik is the owner of MK Design Studio, a creative web design agency based in Malahide Co Dublin.
E-mail: m.kulik@mkdesign.ie Web: www.mkdesign.ie
