Who are Your Website Visitors and What Are They Doing On Your Site?

One of the keys to being able to market your website is to know whose going there and what they are doing.

When armed with this information, you are able to market your site more effectively. You can also see which pages are getting hits and which pages are not. Simple Site Analytics

First and foremost you will want to check with your web hosting service to see if they offer site analytics with their hosting packages.

Many web hosting providers offer this with your hosting package and all you have to do is set-up your password.
These are generally very basic programs that let you know how many people visited your site on a daily, weekly and monthly basis. They can also provide you with hit information on various pages and the types of browsers that were being used.

Google also offers an excellent and free site analytics program. This program is very useful as it is web based and will even show you what parts of the country people are located in.

They can also provide you with information on visits by source. For example, 33% of your traffic may be coming from Yahoo! and another 33% is coming from a referral site, 16% is coming directly to your site, etc. This information is useful in helping you to determine where your marketing is really working at. The information You Receive

We'll use Google's Analytics as an example here. This program provides you with a visitor summary in four charts. Here you get a quick snapshot of the visits to your site. You see how many total number of visits and page views you have received as well as the number of first time visits and returning visits. You can also see which cities your visitors came from.

The marketing summary is also very useful. Here you will find your top five sources of traffic. You will also find the top five keywords that have been getting you traffic as well as your top five marketing campaigns. These will tell you which area is up and working good for you as well as which areas have seen a decline. These are known as conversion rates.
The marketing summary will also tell you the difference between organic, referral, not set and direct hits on your website. These are very useful tools when determining which of your marketing efforts have been working for you the best. Many programs will provide you with very similar information such as this.

You may also consider using more than one website analytics program so that you can get an even better view of whether or not your marketing campaigns have been working and where. Some programs may include better features than other and you can combine the information from them all to get a good overall view of your website.

Action Steps For Using Site Analytics

1. Determine the type of information you would like to receive from a website analytics program.

2. Begin searching for products that will fulfill your requirements.

3. Compare your marketing efforts to your traffic and page views.

Important Points About Site Analytics

* Don't forget to set your free site analytics up through your hosting service if it is available.
* Google offers many tools that can give you a different view of your traffic.
* Combine multiple services for the most information.