Running a website and failing to keep track of its usage statistics is like managing a company without taking a look at its books to check the income and expenditure flow. Web statistics serve as the “accounting books” of a website.
With the data, a website business owner can find out if the site is doing well, if there are any pages that need revision, and if the lead generation is working the way it's intended to, among other factors. These statistics tell whether the website is performing according to expectations, or just sitting there looking pretty but being a total waste of money.
Several questions need to be asked. Have people found the website? Do they get there from the search engines, or from some other site? When they get to the website, do they find the information they're looking for? Are they compelled to stay and browse through the pages, or do they click away after a single look. All of this a website owner can glean from his website statistics.
The most basic information will tell how many unique visitors click on the site at any given time, the length of their visits, the keywords they used to find the site, which search engines, directories or websites referred them to the site, and the top entry and exit pages they used.
Getting a hold of these statistics and knowing how the data impacts the website are vital for the online business owner to find out if the site is meeting its goals.
One measure is the number of unique visitors to the site. A unique visitor is each unique person who clicks on the website, as opposed to a “hit”, which was used to gauge website traffic in the 1990's, but which proved to be unreliable as “hits” could be return visitors, or just one visitor racking up several “hits” from clicking on the homepage and opening several graphic files (e.g., top page banners, side banners, photographs, etc.) on the page.
Another measure is they keywords visitors used to find the website. Savvy online entrepreneurs have incorporated search engine optimization (SEO) as part of their website marketing plan. This means they will have established which keywords or phrases they should use so visitors looking for what they have to offer can find them via the search engines by entering any of these keywords and phrases.
Search engine referrals will also tell the business owner how the website has been indexed and ranked according to certain search terms. Website referrals are another indication about how inbound links from other sites bring visitors in.
To get all this data, all an online business owner has to do is invest in a good web traffic counter service to track all this data and convert them into easy-to-understand statistics: tables, graphs and pie-charts that the website owner can make use of to help improve his business.
GoStats offers a completely free hit counter that will deliver information on the number of page views, return visitors and page popularity. For a more comprehensive and feature-packed service, users can upgrade to its pro-version with its customizable display counter and behind-the-scenes reporting using a powerful site statistics analyzer.
With top priority email support and excellent customer service, GoStats offers all this vital information guaranteed to play a huge role in determining website income growth.
Click here to start using web stats to your advantage today!
