Find a Hidden Fortune in Your Website 'Stats'

By Jim Edwards
Posted Thursday, June 24, 2004

Most people never bother to look at the statistics program
that comes with virtually every website because few realize
the goldmine of information it contains.

Your website statistics hold the key for understanding your
traffic, improving sales and increasing the overall
effectiveness of your online selling. Whether you realize it
or not, your website has 'critical numbers' that enable you
to measure the overall success of your Internet presence.

Any serious website operator should understand the four most
important numbers: Hits; Unique, Targeted Visitors; Leads;
Sales.

Hits - Hits are typically page views, whether by the same or
different visitors, and indicate overall activity on the
site.

A lot of hits shows activity (usually a good thing), but
doesn't necessarily mean you've had a high number of
visitors. Search engine 'spiders' and surfers hitting their
back buttons also up the hit count.

Research has shown that, depending on the size of your site,
the ratio of hits to visitors will range anywhere from 2 to
1 all the way up to 12 to 1.

Unique, Targeted Visitors - people surfing to your site who
have not been there before within a certain period of time.
Depending on the statistics program you use, a unique
visitor may be someone who hasn't been to your site in a day
or a week, while in other programs a visitor remains unique
until you reset the stats.

You must understand how your stats program classifies unique
visitors so you don't mistakenly believe your site is
getting 30 unique visitors a day only to find out it is the
same 30 people coming back day after day!

A 'targeted' visitor means that the visitor has an interest
in what you are selling or promoting, this is usually
demonstrated by keyword searches at a search engine or by
clicking targeted advertisements.

It does you no good to attract general traffic to your site
-you want unique, targeted visitors actively seeking your
product or service.

Leads - a valid email address usually makes the best 'lead'
since people can and do give fake names and addresses
online. If someone won't give you a valid email address,
chances are they won't give you their credit card to make a
purchase either.

Email leads enable you to measure interest and to follow up
with prospects. Once you know the number of unique visitors
to your site you can calculate the percentage of leads you
develop and concentrate on ways to improve your conversion
by testing different offers and headlines.

Sales - the number of sales as compared to unique visitors
represents your most critical statistic because it tells you
whether or not you've made a profit.

For every hundred visitors to your site, how many sales do
you make and how much money do you net?

Most failed dot-com's never bothered to answer this simple
question.

Selling on the web is a 'numbers game' - learn how to make
the numbers work for you!

About the Author
Jim Edwards is a syndicated newspaper columnist and the co-
author of an amazing new ebook, "Turn Words Into Traffic,"
that will teach you how to use free articles to quickly
drive thousands of targeted visitors to your website or
affiliate link!
Click Here ==> (http://www.turnwordsintotraffic.com)