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Webmaster Outpost
( Strategy, Downloads, Products, Articles )
by Webmaster Outpost Staff
Strategy: "Measure Your Weaknesses Instead" – By tackling areas where you are weak, your whole site can get stronger. Just like a farmer, you want to yield the best crop possible.
There are a variety of statistics about your site that can be measured, however, only a few will have any significant meaning. Based on your subject matter and target audience, however, there will probably be a few specific statistics that mean even more.
Every time someone visits a page on your site, the HTML code and associated images are downloaded. Each physical file that is downloaded constitutes a HIT. This is not a very relevant statistic, because the number of images contained on the page distorts the value.
A much more reliable statistic is the PAGE HIT, which reflects the number of times HTML pages are downloaded. Tracking the number of page hits you get on a monthly basis is a very good measure of your success. This is an easy statistic to derive from your server logs and is typically listed on standard reports provided by web hosts.
Page hits, while valuable, are also slightly distorted based on the number of pages your site contains. Increasingly, advertisers are inquires as to the number of UNIQUE VISITORS your site attracts on a monthly basis. Unique visitors represent true advertising opportunities.
If you are lucky enough to have access to your unique visitors, you can calculate the average number of page hits per visitor, which represents your STICKINESS FACTOR. The more pages you can get each visitor to view, the "stickier" your site is, and stickier sites tend to attract more visitors.
All pages are not created equal, so you should anticipate some pages would get more hits than others would. So what? Well, you should be watching for very popular content pages and taking two actions: (1) put your best/more affiliate links on that page and (2) make more content like it. If people like pages with your opinions, give them more. If they like pages with list, more. Etc. etc. etc.
As for the "not spots", or pages which are not being visited. You should (a) make sure the page is well linked from other pages, and (b) re-read the content to see if it is still valuable. Many times we simply remove poor performing pages, to minimize our overhead.
Measuring your hits at the page level is critical to monitoring these peaks and valleys. Watching your site grow on the whole is important, but fine-tuning can only be done at the page level.
Some people are funny. They can be totally annoyed, or unhappy, or disappointed, and never tell you, unless you ask. Others are just bubbling to give you a piece of their mind. If your site is going to be successful you need to both listen and ask questions of the people visiting your site.
Many sites use a guestbook to allow visitors to record their presence and leave feedback about their experience. If you decide not to have a guestbook, always create a feedback page and/or post an e-mail address for feedback. VERY IMPORTANT: If a visitor posts a question, or makes a vague complaint, always follow-up and either answer the question or ask for more information. It's easier to lose a visitor than gain a new one. A little extra effort in public relations will go a long way.
We never publish a web site without some form a survey included, and we always read the responses. Surveys give you an opportunity to ask people if they like what they see and what else they might want to see added. When we launched our first site, we were worried that we would run out of ideas for content. We quickly learned that our visitors would make sure that never happens.
So far we've only talked about statistics relating to the site itself. Also important is to know how your site measures up against others. There are two things to carefully monitor. First, how well does your site rank in each of the search engines for your primary topic? This is easy to measure, as all you have to do is visit each engine, search for your topic, and just count where your site is listed. Sites in the top ten have a great advantage since studies have shown that surfers more often choose from the first page of results.
Second, how many sites are linking to yours? This important for two reasons: (a) it helps with your search engine ranking, and (b) the more sites linking to you, the more chances that visitors will find your site. Keep in mind that link popularity tests are only approximations. There may be other sites linking to you that have not been indexed by a particular search engine.
Certainly, an important measure should be the amount of revenue your site is generating compared to the number of visitors your are getting each month. Many professional sites actually measure the COST TO ACQUIRE a visitor, meaning take the amount of money you spend on advertising and PPC programs and divide it by number of visitors. Conversely, take the amount of money you generated and divide it by the number of visitors to calculate the VALUE TO ACQUIRE of each new visitor you attract.
A word of warning, monitoring statistics can become an addictive activity if you are not careful. We have friends who became so obsessed with it that they began to spend less and less time actually improving their site. Our advice is to watch them closely, but not every hour of the day.
For additional information on increasing your popularity, read Mike Valentine's article "Draw Customers In Like a Magnet!".
Continue on to Internet Advertising: Putting Internet Advertising to Work for You