Your Website Statistics

Writen by Anita Larson

I listen to what they are saying and then
ask the Magic Question – “What do your statistics
tell you?” At this point, I either hear:

1. Crickets chirping.

2. I don’t have statistics or know how to
access them.

Why are statistics important and why should you
care? Here are a few real-life web stories that will
help answer that question. For confidentiality
reasons, names and websites are not disclosed.

E Commerce

A large retail company paid upwards of $10,000 for a
website. They have hundreds of products to buy in
their online catalog. After many months of having
very few sales they found me and said their website
wasn’t working. Then I asked the Magic
Question, “What are your statistics telling you?”
Their response was #2. However, they were
able to call their hosting company and get the
access codes. After carefully reviewing their stats
we discovered 3,000 unique visitors a day were
coming to their home page and leaving in less than
10 seconds, not visiting any other page in their site.
Traffic was coming to the site, they just weren't
taking the desired action.
The simple solution was to change the wording and
navigation on the home page to encourage visitors to
buy. Within 30 days of making these revisions the
company began getting hundreds of online orders.

Services

A consultant selling services was spending several
hours each week marketing her website. She was
exchanging links and submitting articles. She had
very few subscribers to her ezine and was hoping to
see better results from her marketing efforts. I
listened then asked the Magic Question. I
heard response #1 – crickets chirping. After some
discussion we were able to determine that she did
indeed have statistics and I was able to see
immediately what was happening. Under the Referring
URLs section I saw that 189 visitors came to her site
from one article submission. This is excellent! What is
happening? Let’s go
back and take a look at the site. On her home page,
the upper right corner did not include an action
button nor were there any clickable links to take
visitors to other pages in the site. The ezine sign-up
box was “below the fold” meaning a visitor had to
scroll to find it. I also recommended she send a thank
you note to the site that posted her articles and
begin some cross-marketing online. To get more
subscribers to her ezine I suggested offering a
bonus, package deal or free article. She now
understands the value of reviewing her stats in
connection with her marketing efforts. It’s a good
idea to get a website evaluation by a 3rd party
before spending hours of time or $$$ on
marketing.

Clients & Referrals

This architect wanted a website mainly for clients to
see and also for clients to easily refer others to him.
Their first website was designed by someone’s son in
the office. It did not portray their professional, luxury
image or have the colors of their logo on the
site. A bad website is worse than no website at all. A
company without a website these days is like not
having a business card. A website establishes
credibility and can feature so much more than a
printed brochure at a fraction of the cost. It’s
important for this firm to review their statistics to
see Page Views. Which pages are clients going to?
Exit pages tell us where they left the site. There is
no email address on the site so we made the phone
number in a larger font and listed it twice on each
page. (You don’t have to be computer literate or
even use email to have a website presence). There is
also an action button to Refer a Friend. This makes it
easy for clients to refer someone to the site. This
client recently moved and the map, new phone # and
address were posted on the website even before the
movers got there. An email notice was sent to all
current and past clients notifying them of the
change. Printing and postal mailing would have taken
much longer. This firm’s website is generating new
business and they are ecstatic with the results.

If these clients had not viewed their statistics they
would just be guessing at how much gas was left in
the car. They may have spent money on search
engine optimization when all they needed to do was
change the website itself. Statistics show results.
Whenever you hire any company to do marketing,
article submissions or search engine submissions -
you'll see the results of those efforts in the
statistics. How often should you check your
statistics? Some
people check them daily. I think once a month is fine.
One word of caution, avoid changing your website
too frequently based on small numbers. Let your
website just BE for awhile – about 3 months before
making radical changes. Then you’ll have some
substantial numbers and a good timeframe to
evaluate what is working and what is not.

Anita Larson, The Web Muse & Co., http://www.thewebmuse.com

Creating websites to attract your ideal clients.