Understanding Site Statistics

Different software packages offer different types of site statistics. Some are nearly worthless while others give you a good overview of your site's traffic.

HITS
Let me first clear up a common misconception - hits. Hits became a common misnomer among site owners when statistics first became available. Unfortunately, hits was interpreted incorrectly. A page with 2 graphics on it will produce 3 "hits" when viewed. Why? Because there were three calls to the server - send the HTML file, send the first picture, send the second picture. Pages with more graphics on them will produce more "hits." Framesets will produce even more 'hits" as the document for each of the frame windows is loaded.

SESSIONS
Some of the better software packages will separate hits from "sessions." A session begins when a visitor enters your site and ends when they leave. Thus a "session" is one visitor. Another session could be the visitor returning, however, so unless your software package tracks "unique visitors" or "unique sessions" sessions do not necessarily reflect different visitors.

PAGE VIEW HITS
Page view hits is different than just "hits." A page view hit counts the page and all of its elements as one hit. While this is more accurate that just "hits", it is still not as accurate as sessions for counting visitors since one visitor could return to a page multiple times within a session.

REFERRERS
Referrers document how a visitor got to your site. Did they come from a search engine? Did they come from an online directory or banner ad? You'll probably notice that many of your referrers came from your own web site. How could this be? More than likely these are previous visitors who have bookmarked a specific page of your site.

You should see a good number of referrers coming from search engines, if you've designed your site correctly and submitted it to the major search engines. So, what's a "good" number of search engine referrers? Internet marketing associations have determined that the average site gets 6% of its traffic from search engines. This is because a visitor is likely to visit your site via a search query only once. If your site is relevant, they would most likely bookmark it for future reference. Thus that 6% figure indicates "new" visitors to your site. If your site is receiving search engine traffic that accounts for 6% or better of your total visitors - you're right on track. (Newer sites may receive higher percentages as nearly everyone that comes to the site is a first time visitor.)

GEOGRAPHICAL STATS
Many software packages will tell you which state and/or country your site visitors are coming from. There is a caveat here: the geographical location of a site visitor is based on their Internet Provider. Thus all AOL users, regardless of where they actually reside, show up as coming from Virginia - the state where AOL is registered. Earthlink subscribers will register as coming from California, I have AT&T Broadband and register as coming from Massachusetts. While this doesn't make the stats totally useless, you should not dwell too hard on these numbers. Their accuracy is suspect.

BROWSERS & OPERATING SYSTEMS
This is a section that anyone who designs web sites needs to study. It's important to understand the operating system and browsers your visitors are using to view your site in order to make sure that they can experience your site the way you intended them to. Certain industries may find that the Mac operating system is the most popular one used when visiting their site, while others may rarely see a Mac owner visit their site. Why does it make a difference? Different browsers, different operating systems, and different monitors will all display your site just a little bit different. In some cases, the difference may be so extreme that a high percentage of your visitors may not even be able to view your site properly. If you've never viewed your site on a Macintosh computer, you may be surprised at just how different it looks.

KEYWORDS
A good stat program should be able to provide you with some keywords used at various search engines to find your site. While they can't capture every keyword, and they often break phrases into individual words, this does give you an idea of how your site is being found. Are these the appropriate keywords for your site? Are they unique enough to send you qualified visitors or are you getting tons of traffic from people looking for something totally different? For example, if your site is a financial site selling investment CD's, are your visitors coming looking to invest or are they looking for music? This section should give you an idea and help you to fine tune your site's copy.

WHERE DO I YOU GET STATS?
Many hosting companies offer statistics as part of their package, but some have such poor statistics that you can't make heads or tails of what's happening. In cases like that, you will need to either move your site to a hosting company that offers a better statistics program or purchase third-party stats. I like the stats you can purchase at sitetracker.com. They are very comprehensive and easy to understand. They provide you with a bit of code that you can copy and paste into each page of your site and, viola! you have stats. If you put the code just before the closing body tag, it will not slow down the load time of your pages. Another good program, less expensive but not as comprehensive as sitetracker.com, is Extreme-dm.com (Extreme Tracker). For only $5/month you can get invisible stats on your pages, however the information they provide is cumulative. You can't ask for specific dates the way you can at sitetracker.com.

Web-Kare's hosting packages includes site statistics from Live Media at no additional cost. We find these statistics to be comprehensive and easy to understand. They offer all of the information mentioned in this article and more and, while Web-Kare prints out your stats each month and mails them to you, you can also access them online at any time.