For those of us blogging or with websites, it’s both exciting and informative to view our web stats. One magnificent marketing expert, Think Splendid shares her expert thoughts on the subject.
With permission, I quote:
How to Read Web Stats
Analyzing traffic statistics is an important part of maintaining a
business website or blog, but they can be confusing, especially
when you aren’t sure what it is exactly the numbers mean. Here is
an abridged explanation on how to measure stats effectively:
Hits
Hits are incredibly misleading because they do not equal
people. A hit is tracked for every file loaded each time your
page is loaded. This means that each photo is tracked as a hit,
so if you have a blog heavy with pictures, each time a reader
loads that page, you are getting a substantial amount of hits.
For example, if you blogged about a recent wedding and have
10 photos up from it, then that post counts as 11 or more hits
each time it is viewed by one person. So if you had 100 visitors in
one day and 10 pictures on your first page, that would be over
1,000 hits just because of the photos alone. A lot of people like to
measure hits because the numbers are inflated and it makes
them feel as though they are receiving a lot of traffic and are popular.
While the ego boost may feel nice for a while, it is based on numbers
that don’t actually mean too much and that do not measure how
effective your blog or site actually is.
Page Views
Page views vary per visitor because they are tracked each time
a new page is loaded. Knowing page views is useful because it
can help you determine how long people are staying on your
site once they arrive. Did they find your blog and leave
immediately or did they stick around and dig through your
archives? If you are tracking your website, it is important to know
if the information you are presenting hooked them in to learn
more about you and your company, or if they got bored and
went on to the next planner’s site on their list.
When analyzing page view numbers, it is important not to give
them more weight than they’re worth. If your aunt is reading
through everything you ever wrote, then those numbers don’t
really count for much because she is probably not a potential client.
Same goes for a competitor searching through all of your archives
or site pages to see what you’ve been up to.
Unique Visitors
Well, if you want to read Splendid Communications’ further insights on stats here’s the rest of the free e-book. Or simply explore her informative marketing web blog.