Let's assume that you've generated a nice long report, using the log
analysis tool of your choice. We'll go through each section of a typical
traffic report, and see how many traffic-building brainstorms we can come
up with.
Most Requested Pages
This section is a gold mine. Here you can see which of your pages are
bringing in the most hits. Most sites will expect to see their home page
at the top, followed by the home or "hub" pages of the major sections of
your site.
Most log analysis programs can filter out user-specified file types for
this report, and many people set things up to show only .html or .htm
files, to avoid cluttering the report up with image files, scripts and so
forth. Sometimes it's useful to see what's going on with those other types
of files, however. For example, a WebTrends report can include a list of
the most submitted forms and scripts. Looking at this info for my site, I
realized that there was an old CGI script, that we thought we
had retired, still linked somewhere and churning out a few impressions a
day.
Looking at the relative amounts of traffic that certain pages (or
directories) get, you can get an idea of what people are using your site
for. Are most of your visitors coming for product support? for product
information? Which products are they asking for information about? It's
tempting to conclude that pages or sections that get more traffic are the
ones that visitors like more, but things aren't that simple.
The amount of traffic a particular page or section gets may have more
to do with the number and prominence of links that lead to it than with
how much visitors like it. For example, looking at the report for The Web Developer's
Journal, I can see that the top five pages each generate a big
percentage of the total impressions. Now, I happen to know that all five
of these pages are ones that have earned a listing in Yahoo. That's why
they get lots of hitskys - there are plenty of other pages that readers
would probably like just as much if they were listed, too.
There's one pearl of wisdom for you, in case you didn't already know:
the big directories generate lots of traffic, and Yahoo is the biggest of
the big. If you don't already have a listing in Yahoo, it's well worth
your time to try to get listed.
The prominence of links on your site obviously has a lot to do with the
amount of traffic an interior page will get. A page that's linked from
your navbar on every page, or that has a big prominent link on the home
page, will get a lot more action than one that's just referenced by a hot
link in some text somewhere.
Keep in mind that the popularity of an individual page can be
interpreted in two opposite ways. On the one hand, if a certain type of
content is generating more hits than other types, then it makes sense to
go with a winner - push that type of content even more, and create new
stuff in the same vein. On the other hand, if a section isn't getting much
traffic, and you think it should, it might be time to push it a little
more, by giving it more prominent internal links, and perhaps submitting
it individually to directories and such.
Some programs can report not only the most popular pages, but things
like:
Least popular pages - Remember, this doesn't mean people didn't
like those pages, it means few people saw them in the first place. If this
list contains pages of limited importance, that you wouldn't expect many
people to visit anyway, then you're looking good. If you see important
content pages on this list, you may want to take steps to steer more
people toward them.
Top entry pages - Useful for finding out which pages are linked
from other sites, search engines, etc.
Top exit pages - Keeping visitors on your site as long as
possible is a worthy goal, especially if you're an ad-supported site.
Analyzing pages that tend to make people want to leave may help you figure
out how to make them a little stickier.
Single access pages - Pages that visitors access and exit
without viewing any other page. These pages are entry pages to your site,
but for some reason they don't entice very many people to visit other
sections. If you can figure out why not, you may be able to boost your
overall traffic by a hair.
The most useful insights come when you start combining the individual
page traffic with other data. For example, let's say you're selling
products on your site. Your traffic report tells you that your home page
is getting healthy traffic, but your ordering page is getting only a tiny
percentage of that. You replace the small text link to your ordering page
with a big bright yellow image that flashes on and off, and says "Click
here NOW! Or else!" A month later, you run another report, and find that
traffic to your ordering page has skyrocketed.
When you compare the traffic data for that page with your actual
orders, however, you find that only a tiny fraction of the people who
visited the order page actually placed an order. That is, your "conversion
rate" (the percentage of visitors converted into customers) is low. This
indicates that you should direct your efforts toward making the order page
better before you spend time trying to build more traffic to it.
Often tiny changes in page layout or wording can
make a big difference in visitor behavior. Keep careful track of any
modifications you make to your pages, then compare the dates of those
changes to the dates of any increases or decreases in traffic, as revealed
by your log reports.
Web site errors mean lost traffic. Fixing dead links and malfunctioning
scripts may not sound like marketing work, but every visitor who fails to
find what they're looking for, or leaves in disgust because your whizzy
features don't work right, is a penny out of your pocket. A log analysis
program can give you a breakdown of the different type of errors that
occur.
To err is human, and humans built the Web, so even the most tightly-run
Web site will log a few errors. If the percentage of requests resulting in
errors seems unusually high, however, there may be problems that need to
be fixed.
If you're getting a lot of 404s (page not found errors), then you may
have some bad links on your site. You can find and fix them with a program
like LinkBot,
or with the Link Analysis cartridge which is included with the more
expensive versions of WebTrends. Lots of script errors? Perhaps you have
scripts somewhere that are malfunctioning. If so, track them down and fix
them to convert those errors into impressions. A lot of script errors may
also indicate that many of your visitors have older browsers that can't
handle the newfangled stuff. Either figure out how to hide the scripts
from the older browsers, or get rid of 'em.
Most Active Countries
If your Web site is aimed solely at US visitors, then you don't want
traffic from other countries - it just ties up your server with visits
from people who won't be buying anything. If your Web site has
international appeal, however, then the more the merrier.
For US sites, the US will represent the lion's share of your traffic,
with the UK, Canada, and Australia following. The next ones will usually
be Germany and Sweden, followed by the other affluent Anglophiles of
Western Europe.
The relative amounts of traffic from each country can tell you several
things. If the percentage of your traffic that is from outside the US is
tiny, then you may be able to realize a substantial overall boost by
increasing your international traffic. Submit your site to international
search engines and directories - all the major search engines have
regional versions that you can submit to, and there are also various
specialized search engines for particular regions, such as Euroseek.
If a particular country or region places high in the list of most
active countries (out of the usual order listed above), then your content
would seem to appeal to visitors from that region. You might try to
capitalize on that by adding more regional content, or even translating
some of your pages into another language. For example, the Latin American
countries usually place far below the major English-speaking and Western
European countries. If Mexico and Venezuela are placing just as high as
Sweden and Holland, then it would appear that your site has
South-of-the-border appeal. You might try to build on that by blitzing the
Spanish-language search engines, or even adding a special South American
page. On the other hand, as discussed above, you might take that as
evidence that you have the Latin world covered, and concentrate on the
Germanic world instead.
