Website Traffic Analysis
Categories:
Website Traffic Analysis
DEFINITIONS
- hits: A questionable measure of web site traffic. Count one hit each time a browser request is made from a web server. For example, a page containing 5 images counts 6 hits each time it is viewed (once for each image and once for the page itself). Page views are a much better way to measure traffic.
- page views: the number of times distinct pages of a website are served
- unique visits: individuals who have visited a Web site (or network) at least once in a fixed time frame, typically a 30 day period
- referrers: links in other pages that link to the site
- user pathway analysis: tracks how users travel through a site
- most and least popular pages: self-explanatory - however, this can tell you which pages you are spending too much or too little time on - why would you waste a lot of time on a site that does not get a lot of views - you need to strategize navigation elements and 'action' buttons to pages that get the traffic.
- screen resolution/browsers: this information will tell you what browsers are being used and what the screen resolution is of the computers viewing your site are - you'll need this info to compose your site for optimized cross-browser/screen resolution browsing by users
Things To Look For
IT'S ABOUT TREND NOT NUMBERS (of hits, page views, etc.)
- Consistency:
- Is there consistency between pages and navigational elements?
- people may not always enter the website through the home page
- Interest:
- can you keep your users on a page for at least 1 minute?
- Traffic patterns:
- are these correlated with eCampaigns/eNewsletters?
- time of day: are users coming during the day (usually work related) or at night (usually leisure related)
Privacy
- riseup.net created a patch to ensure privacy on log files for your website (files which store user access info)
- the Electronic Frontier Foundation has some articles too
**tracks where on the page people clicked -VERY COOL!
