Why look at site traffic reports?
Site traffic reports will tell you, roughly, how many people are visiting your site and all files requested by your visitors, this includes all graphic files as well as HTML pages. These reports are created by your host server as it responds to internet requests for web pages, graphics , etc.
While usage statistics don't give us perfect information about who is visiting a site, site traffic reports can be an important part to your web site marketing strategy. Page views are used by the Internet industry as a guide to how many people are actually visiting a site. If one page gets twice as many hits as any other, this is an area you might want to expand.
The best way to analyze your statistics is to compare the figures over time. If the number of visitors accessing your site doubles in a month, you can forget about the vagaries of web stats, you know you're doing something right!
If you check your stats mid-month, of course, that month's stats will be incomplete. You can click on each month in your summary report and get very detailed statistics.
Know your traffic language
Crawlers
Also called spiders or bots (short for robots), these programs automatically visit Web sites, read pages, and collect information. Used often in search engines, crawlers can artificially inflate the number of page visits for a particular site up to 30 percent. The better traffic-analysis tools filter such visits out when creating traffic reports.
Sites
A remote machine that makes requests to your server, and is based on the remote machines IP Address/Hostname.
KBytes
This is the amount of data sent during the whole summary period as reported
by the server. Note that some servers log the size of a document instead
of the actual number of bytes transferred. While in most cases this is the
same, if a user interrupts the transmission by pressing the browser's stop
button before the page has been received completely, some servers (for example
all Netscape web servers) do not log the amount of data transferred but the
amount of data which would have been transferred if the user would have completely
loaded the page.
Visits
Also referred to as Sessions. A sequence of requests made by one user at one
site. If a visitor does not request any new information for a period of time,
known as the "time-out" period, then the next request by the visitor
is considered a new visit. To enable comparisons among sites, I/PRO uses
a 30-minute time-out.
Pages
Number of times a page of the site is viewed (Sum for all visitors, visits).
The counter differs from "hits because it counts only HTML pages and
not images or other files.
Files
Actual amount of "different" or "unique" files (pages and
graphics) displayed. Since many files may repeat from page to page, and since
callers can go back and forth, these are not considered Hits. By looking at the difference between hits and files, you can get a rough indication of repeat visitors, as the greater the difference between the two, the more people are requesting pages they already have cached (have viewed already).
Hits
Also often referred to as Requests. Each time a Web server sends a file to
a browser, it is recorded in the server log file as a "hit". Hits
are generated for every element of a requested page (including graphics,
text and interactive items). If a page containing two graphics is viewed
by a user, three hits will be recorded - one for the page itself and one
for each graphic. Webmasters use hits to measure their server's work load.
Because page designs vary greatly, hits are a poor guide for traffic measurement.
Valid Hits
A further refinement of hits, valid hits are hits that deliver all information
to a user. Excludes hits such as redirects, error messages and computer-generated
hits.
URL
An abbreviation for Uniform Resource Locator. A specific address used by
Web browsing software to locate and access information on the WWW. Pronounced "You
Are El."
Total Hits
The aggregate numbers of requests made to any page, image, or
file representing your web site.
Total Files
Total files sent is the number of individual responses either as HTML files
(text) or image files (.jpg or .gif).
Total Pages
This one of the important readouts. This indicates how many actual web pages
were looked at during each VISIT to your site.
Total Visits
An actual distinct visit. While a caller may return and again count as a VISIT,
during their stay on your site, all the activities are counted as one Unique
VISIT. There is a setting of approximately 5 minutes after they leave, before
they
will again be counted as another VISIT.
Total KBytes
Is the amount of information representing the total number of requests to your
site. Total KB transferred is the amount of information actually sent to
the browsers requesting it. The difference between the two represents a request
for which the user already had the file in their browser's cache and therefore
no file was sent.
Total Unique Sites
Represents the number of unique sites (other IP address) which have visited
your web site Be aware, though, that some sites such as AOL appear to be
identical to the server even though they may represent hundreds or thousands
of individual users. In fact, most dial-up systems appear to be one site
rather than a lot of users.
Total Unique URLs
Is the number of unique URLs which were requested for your site. A URL is defined
here as any path which leads to a file based on a request from a user. This
means that something like "www.yoursite.com/home.htm" is one URL
and "www.yoursite.com/imageonhomepage.gif" is another URL.
Total Unique Referrers
Referrers is the number of other portals which were used as the "jump
off" or departure point for a user to get to your site. This could represent
a link returned as a positive response on a search engine. When the user clicks
on that link, they are "referred" to your site. The number of unique
referrers which users went through to get to your site can be complex because
if your home page has links to lower-level pages on your website, each lower-level
page clicked on by a user is "referred" by your home page. This number
represents a "link" count more than it does users.
Total Unique Usernames
Number of client hosts (IP Address) who came to visit the site (and to see
a list of pages). This is roughly the number of different people who visited
the site.
Total Unique User Agents
Represents the number of different browsers which have viewed your site. There
may be only two commonly used browsers (Explorer and Navigator/Communicator)
but there are several versions of each running on several different kinds
of machines. Each variation is a different agent.
Max hits per day
Is the number of requests for pages or images which your site received at the
highest use period for the month you are viewing.
Average hits per day
Is simply an average total number of hits in a month divided by the number
of days and is a good number to use for planning purposes since it averages
weekdays and weekends and all hours of each day.
Max hits per hour
Represents the single hour this month where you received more hits than any
single other time period.
Average hits per hour
Represents the total number of hits for each hour in a 24-hour period and divides
each hour's number of hits by the number of days. This can be a misleading
number, though, since in the time period 1 am Eastern through 5 am Eastern
(5am Greenwich to 9 am Greenwich) is the true lull period on the internet,
at least for now. That period can have zero hits to your site, but the average
hits per hour averages those times as well.
Analyzing the results
To successfully run and grow your site, you should be asking questions such as:
- How heavily used is the site?
- Is the usage growing or falling?
- What are the most popular pages?
- There is important information on the site. Is it being read?
- Can users make sense of the site?
- Is the site navigation working?
- Has recent training and marketing increased site usage?
- When during the day is the site used?
- How much load is the site placing on the server?
- What pages are generating the most site traffic?
Graph of monthly usage
Shows at a glance the overall state of site usage, as well as the growth or decline in usage.
Questions answered:
Is the usage growing or falling?
This graph will clearly show whether usage is increasing or falling. If usage is going down, or not growing at a reasonable rate, it's time to starting thinking about further marketing your site. If growth is poor, you might also want to check whether your users are struggling to understand the design of the site. This can be done using some simple usability testing.
Table of monthly usage
This shows the same information as the previous graph, but in a numerical format that lends itself well to in-depth analysis.
Questions answered:
How much load is the site placing on the server?
How heavily used is the site?
The total number of kilobytes downloaded will show the load on the network generated by your site. Most packages will also show a breakdown by hour, or even minute.
Graph of daily usage
Shows at a glance how usage is changing on a day-by-day basis.
Questions answered:
Has recent training and marketing increased site usage?
How heavily used is the site?
Is the usage growing, or falling?
By keeping a close eye on the daily summaries, you can assess how successful your training and marketing is. If you send out a mail piece advertising a new feature on the site, you would expect to see a 'spike' in site usage for the next few days. Likewise, training should generate an increase in usage, although perhaps at a slower rate.
Table of daily usage
Shows at a glance how usage is changing on a day-by-day basis. This shows the same information as the previous graph, but in a tabular format.
Questions answered:
How much load is the site placing on the server?
How heavily used is the site?
Is the usage growing, or falling?
Graph of hourly usage
Summa rises the usage of the site on a hourly basis.
Questions answered:
When during the day is the site used?
Top URLs
The most popular pages on the site. These stats also allow the number of hits to be determined for any page on the site, not just the most popular pages.
Questions answered:
What are the most popular pages?
There is important information on the site. Is it being read? Are the important pages at the top of this list, or at the bottom? Clearly, you would like the important pages (such as company news, etc) to be frequently read. If this is not happening, consider either:
Re-designing the site to increase the prominence of the pages.
Marketing these pages more heavily to your users.
Can users make sense of the site?
This is a hard question to answer. Web statistics will not provide you with the complete answer, but may give you some clues when used in conjunction with user surveys and usability testing. If the overall use of the site is low, and restricted to only a few sections, this should give you the hint that users are struggling with the design or implementation of the site.
When you make changes to the design or structure of the site, keep a close eye on the site usage. This will help you assess whether the changes were successful.
Is the site navigation working?
If only a very few sections of the site are being used, it is safe to say that your users haven't been able to find the useful information located in other areas of your site.
Top URLs by size
Summarizes the usage of the site on a hourly basis.
The pages on the site generating the most downloaded information.
Questions answered:
What pages are generating the most site traffic?
Conclusion
These details can then be used to:
- improve the design of your site
- enhance the effectiveness of your training and marketing
- increase the number of users reading vital information
- ensure that users can actually use the site