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Traffic & Analyzing your Traffic
The types of traffic that a web site is receiving is what
will make or break its online presence and effectiveness.
The information gained from analyzing traffic to a web site
can prove invaluable. The information that can be found
through an effective analysis session can be used for soliciting
advertisers, tracking which promotion methods work best,
and even suggest improvements to the site.
The consistent and methodical tracking and analyzing of
traffic to any web site can prove to be invaluable for serious
web site owners. Hidden within many server logs and scary
looking code, lies a wealth of information that one would
need to know in order to improve the site in many ways.
There are many tools that can be used to analyze traffic
and server logs. Regardless of the tools used by any site
owner or optimizing professional, the following information
should be researched to maximize site potential. Again,
these are only the basics, but do serve as very informative
sources to help determine web sites effectiveness from the
user's point of view.
Unique Site Visitors
A unique visitor is really a single computer connecting
to a web site. While each visitor may view several pages
and travel throughout a site's various pages and resources,
they will only register once as a unique visitor (usually
per 24 hour period).
Total Number of Page views
Most statistical analysis tools see a page view as a count
of singular web pages requested from a web site’s
server. Often, one unique visitor may view a number of pages.
One excellent way to see how well your site works, is by
figuring out how many pages on average each visitor looks
at. In order to figure this out, simply take the overall
number of page views for a given amount of time, and divide
that amount by the number of unique visitors in that same
reporting time span. The result of having this information
is that it is extremely helpful in determining whether you
need to work on navigational systems or the addition of
enticing content and teasers aimed at directing visitors
to move throughout your site.
Hits
A few years ago, web sites were determined a success if
they had the most hits. This is one of the most important
myths to forget as web site analysis achieves new levels
of achievement. Essentially, a hit is recorded when a site's
web server serves up one particular file from a client request.
It is critical to understand that, if a web site has 15
separate images serving as a navigational bar; every time
a user access any page with that bar they are registering
as 16 hits. 1 hit would then be recorded for the HTML formatted
page and another 15 hits for each individual image. While
reviewing the number of hits, keep in mind that every single
resource that is loaded onto a page, whether it be an image,
cgi-script, java script, or additional plug in; a hit is
recorded. Therefore, the number of hits is not always a
good way to measure a sites success in relation to traffic.
Referrer
Every time a web surfer browses any page on any site, their
browser software sends a referrer to the destination's server.
This allows analysts to track where their visitors have
been arriving from when they originally get to their particular
web site. This information alone serves as an excellent
foundation of clarifying the success (or failure) of link
affiliation programs, banner advertisements, and other resourceful
listing services. Through understanding where the bulk of
visitors are coming from, site owners and designers can
begin to research various methods of promotion or advertising
based upon the main sources of referrals.
Browser Software & Version, Resolution, OS
Unfortunately, not all traffic analysis programs and services
are able to decipher the information within log files to
determine the browser software, screen resolution, and operating
system of each user.
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