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Website Stats: What the Numbers Can Teach You
Written By: June Bachman, Wendy Ogryzek and Teresa Mitchell ~ 5/12/2008

bWyse believes that if you are not receiving website statistics, then you are not getting the most out of your website hosting.  One way we differentiate ourselves is to provide our customers with a snapshot of the data collected each month about the traffic to their website.

Reviewing your website statistics each month will help you gauge if you are reaching your website goals.  It is a good idea to take a few moments each month to look and, and think about your website statistics.  This article provides a simple structure to better understand what the numbers are saying to you.

These are the five pieces of data we provide our clients monthly:

  • Number of Visitors – the number of visitors that visited your website.
  • Number of Pages Views – the total number of times your website pages were viewed by the visitors.
  • Best Day of the Month – the day of the month that had the most visitors.
  • Top Three Pages – the most popular three pages that were viewed.
  • Top Three Search Engines – the search engines that visitors used to find your website.

What do these numbers tell us?  While they are snapshots of the previous month’s activity, they also provide us with a picture of the traffic patterns, the ingress and egress of our website and the search engine activities.  In order to provide context and make it easier to think about your website statistics, below is a sample of bWyse’s website statistics for the past two months.

MARCH 2008

/

APRIL 2008

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Visitors

4977

5373

Page Views

11,343

9566

Best Day of the Month

229 Visitors (3-11-08)

410 Visitors (4-8-08)

Top 3 Pages

Products, Portfolio and Home

Blog, Home and Products

Top 3 Search Engines

Google, Yahoo and MSN

Google, Yahoo and MSN

  • We had 400 more visitors in April than in March.  This makes sense, since we worked on our blog - in an attempt to gain more visitors.
  • Although we had more visitors, these visitors viewed fewer total pages in April than they did in March.
  • The best day of the month - for both March and April - was the day that we send out our newsletter. This demonstrates that sending out a newsletter does increase the traffic to your website.
  • It makes sense that one of our top three pages was our portfolio page in March, because we were meeting with a lot of prospects that month . . . many of which were visiting our portfolio page to see our work.  (There are many pages in our portfolio – so this also contributes to the higher pages viewed in March as well.)
  • It also makes sense that our Blog page was in the top three pages in April - since we were working on increasing the traffic to that page during the month of April.

So here are some questions for you to think about, develop answers to and begin to transform the answers into an action plan for your website.

Number of Visitors:

  • Are my marketing efforts working?  Do I get enough traffic?
  • When I sent last month’s e-newsletter or flyer to my customers was there a sharp increase in the number of visitors?
  • What is my conversion rate (visitors to sales)?
  • Am I attracting the “right” customers? In other words – do I get a lot of traffic, but only a few sales?
  • When was my site built?
  • Is it time for a contemporary look and feel?
  • When was the last time I added content? Refreshed content?

Number of Page Views:

  • How many times have pages been viewed in relation to the number of visitors?
  • What’s the trend?
  • What’s the ratio of visitors to page views?
  • Page views should go up exponentially in relation to the number of visitors.
  • At a minimum you are looking for a two to one ratio.  What that tells you is customers are staying on your site longer, while a one-to-one ratio tells you they only went to one page and probably didn’t find what they were looking for.
  • Does your content spark curiosity?
  • Does the content compel a visitor to scan through other pages in your site?
  • When was the last time you added or revised content?
  • Do you have strong “calls to action” that encourage visitors to click through to other pages?

Best Day of the Month:

  • Do increased hits to your site correlate to marketing efforts?  Was your best day the same day you sent an e-newsletter?
  • When was the last time you refreshed content?
  • You’re not marketing your website?  Then the best day isn’t much different from any other day of the month.
  • What might happen to the numbers if I send my e-newsletter on Tuesday mornings instead of Saturday nights?  Why?  Tuesdays have proven to be the best day to send e-newsletters or promotional materials to your clients.  Why?  More are opened.

Top 3 Pages:

  • What are the pages that customers are landing on most?
  • Is that where you want them to land?  Direct them to where you want them to go.  Be a traffic cop.
  • Landing pages, is that where they will be most apt to convert to a sale?
  • If they are not landing on the pages you want them to, what does that say about your site’s navigation?  Marketing?  Content?
  • What is the goal of your website?
  • Where aren’t customers going deeper into your site?
  • Are there trends?  Do the same pages come up in the top three month after month?

Top 3 Search Engines:

  • Given that Google (1), Yahoo (2) and MSN (3) drive 90% of the search engine market, when your stats don’t read 1, 2, 3 what does that tell you?
  • Are you missing marketing opportunities?
  • What is your competition doing that you aren’t?
  • Have the search engines changed their algorithms recently?  You might be doing everything right and the search engines changed the rules of engagement.
  • Is your site’s content static?  When was the last time you added or refreshed content?
  • What efforts have you put into optimizing your website?

We hope that this helps you understand how these five pieces of information can help you drive your customers to your website, convert visitors into buyers, inspire you to add or refresh your site’s content, question your site’s navigation, think about a new look and feel, and begin to see the future of your website and your business through the stats we send you each month.

Statistically speaking, on the “average” day we are “probably” standing by – please call if we can be of service.


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