Website statistics can be very helpful in monitoring visitors — and visits — to your website. They can help you maintain a record and determine what is of most and least interest to visitors by telling you what is being viewed most often and for the longest periods of time.
Website statistics, however, are often misunderstood.
“Hits” for example, are not an accurate representation of visits to a website. In fact, a hit only represents the number of times a file (html, graphic, etc.) has been sent from your web server to a visitor's browser (viewing a single page on a website will often register 10 or more hits). While an increase in hits does represent greater activity on a website, it does not directly equate to the number of visitors.
The reality is that most statistics are not accurate, due to the nature of the Internet. The only way to collect completely accurate statistics is to develop a sophisticated visitor tracking system, and force users to log in to your website each time they visit. Of course, this is far beyond the ability and need of most organizations.
Even though most statistics are not accurate, they are still beneficial in determining trends. For example, if you run a promotion during a certain period of time, you can check to see if there is a corresponding increase in activity on your website.
Here are a few of the most useful statistics:
Unique Visitors Probably the most relevant statistic, it represents the number of individual visitors to your website.
Returning Visitors This tells you how often the same visitors return to your website.
Referrers These are the other websites that include a link to yours, as well as search engines that referenced your website under specific keyword searches.
Page Views This tells you how often specific web pages were viewed, and enables you to determine most and least popular.
Paths These are the routes most visitors use to navigate through your website.
Website Statistics: Facts and Fallacies - To learn more about this author, visit Mathew Georghiou's Website.
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Mathew Georghiou
(Visit Mathew's Website)
Mathew Georghiou, President and CEO,
MediaSpark Inc.
Mathew’s focus is on providing practical,
in-the-trenches business and technology
advice.
Mathew is founder of MediaSpark Inc – an
accomplished technology and design
company, with a focus on software
development and publishing, particularly
in the field of business education games
and simulations.
As CEO and lead software architect, he has
led hundreds of projects, including
multimedia CD-ROMs, Internet products and
websites, training programs, and
consulting projects. Mathew is also the
lead designer of the award-winning www.goventure.net>GoVenture
educational games and simulations.
GoVenture is a line of highly realistic
business and finance games for learning
that have positioned MediaSpark as a
pioneer in education and changing how
people learn.
Prior to MediaSpark, Mathew was an
engineer with IBM Celestica, where he won
several awards, including a national award
for innovation.
Mathew frequently speaks and writes on
topics such as entrepreneurship, business,
education, innovation, and economic
development.
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