Additional Articles for November 2003 Issue
Your Web site as a marketing tool
Your
Web site has the possibility of being a powerful marketing and
information-gathering tool—that is, if you take advantage
of the capability it offers. Sure, your Web site puts your product
or service on the World Wide Web for all to see. It lists your
contact information so people can call, fax or email, and it gathers
information—information that can be very useful to you. However,
that information can only be helpful and useful if you understand
it, and take advantage of it.
Whenever someone visits your Web site, that access is logged. Your
Web site host probably offers a statistics package whereby you
can log in to “see” who’s been looking at your
Web page. It shows so much more. However, you have to understand
the difference between a hit and page view. And, what’s a
visit? A referrer—who’s that?
First, it’s important to establish whether your Web host
offers a stats package. Most do, but depending on what type of
service you have, you may not have access to it. Usually, your
Web host will provide you with a username and password, and you
log onto a Web site showing your site’s statistics. Some
hosts will email you the raw logs. A raw log is not as easy to
read as a nice pie chart on a Web site, but the info is all there—you
simply may have to set aside some time to translate it.
Everyone talks about “hits.” “My Web site had
X number hits this month!” Is that good? Actually, hits are
one of the most misunderstood statistics on the Web. If more people
understood what a hit is, then more people would stop touting this
relatively meaningless statistic.
Every time your Web server (the actual machine on which your Web
page is located) serves up any type of file, it counts as one hit.
Someone looks at a picture on your site: one hit. Someone looks
at a page of all text: one hit. Someone downloads a PDF manual
of your company’s product: one hit. It makes no difference
to the hit counter what file was viewed. One file served equals
one hit.
How many Web pages does your company have that contain only one
file? Not many. Every picture on a Web page is a hit. Every graphic,
every navigation button, all of that stuff, is one hit. Check my
homepage at www.billyrhythm.com. The splash page is two files:
the html file that makes up the page and the navigation graphic.
Each time that single page is loaded it counts as two hits. Next,
check out my online journal: www.billyrhythm.com/traa.html. There
are 17 hits contained on that single page—and it’s
a fairly simple page.
Measuring the popularity of your Web site might be more effective
if you considered “page hits” or “page visits” rather
than individual hits. This will count the number of times an actual
Web page is visited. It’s keeping track of pages, not the
individual hits on the pages. For the month of September, www.billyrhythm.com
(the entire site, not just the front page) received 40,567 hits,
and 12,947 page views.
Let’s say someone visited your site and looked at four Web
pages, then left. Those four Web pages viewed constitute a “visit.” In
August, my site had 12,947 page views, and 5,565 visits. That means
the average visitor looked at 2.3 Web pages within my site before
leaving. Determining what is a good average of page views per visit
can be a little tricky. If the average is too low, then maybe customers
aren’t finding what they’re looking for right away
and leave. Alternatively, maybe they’re finding what they
need, but not finding other items they might use. If it’s
too high, you could argue that clients aren’t finding the
needed information in a reasonable amount of time. That’s
not good, because you want your site to be easily navigable. My
site’s mostly personal, so two page views per person per
visit is fine.
Average time per visit is also helpful. It shows how long the visitor
stayed at your site, looking at pages. You may hear people talking
about “sticky” Web sites. That means that when a person
visits the site, they tend to stay a while. Usually, you’re
trying for sticky. Too long a visit may mean that the customer
can’t find what they’re looking for, but not generally.
Usually, if a customer can’t find what they want in a page
or two, they’ll leave. Try for sticky!
Another thing you’ll probably find in your Web stats package
is a list of referrers. Here, you’ll find the top sites that
link back to yours. In effect, a referrer is driving traffic to
your site. Look through the list to see if you can determine why.
From my stats, I can see a couple of Web pages that have linked
back to me. I can also see quite a few hits coming from message
boards and search engines.
Search engine strings are another great piece of information. Exactly
what are people typing into Google to find your site? I once designed
a site for a small gift shop in Damariscotta. If you knew the name
of the shop and typed that in, their site would come up first,
as you might expect. It’s better to see that someone typed
in “whimsical Maine gifts” and found your site.
In addition, you’ll find some unusual keyword search strings
in your list. For example, I got 60 hits for people looking for “custom
chopper” in Google. I mentioned a Discovery channel show
about choppers back in May. Now Google has ranked me in the top
50 for “custom choppers.”
In your stats package, you should also see a list of entry pages.
The entry page is the first page a visitor gets to. It’s
not always your first page. Let’s say you have some hot product
for which everyone on the Web is searching. You might find that
it’s high up on the list of entry pages. That’s good.
Conversely, if you have a hot product, but it doesn’t seem
to be drawing much traffic (i.e., it’s not high in your stats
list of entry pages), then you might want to re-evaluate that page.
Is it hard to find? Are the keywords right? Consider how to drive
visitors to that page.
You’ll probably find a list of “user agents.” These
agents let you know what browser and operating system a visitor
was using to look at your site. One of the keys to a good Web site
is to be certain the site looks good in all Web browsers, across
all operating systems. Depending on your product, you may find
that many people use a Mac to access your site. In this event,
you would want to make sure your page looks good on Mac. Some designers
only care that a site looks good in Windows with Internet Explorer.
My stats show the vast majority of users look at my pages with
Windows and IE, but I had almost 2,000 views with a Mac.
Understanding the statistics of your Web pages isn’t really
that difficult. More importantly, the information you can glean
from the stats can be very valuable. Make sure you check them frequently,
and ask your designer/Web host if something looks awry. You may
get some good direction from that answer.
Bill Batty, Jr. is the Director of Public Relations and Marketing
for Midcoast Internet Solutions and the drummer for the midcoast
band, Blind Albert. Contact Bill by email: <bbatty@midcoast.com>,
or visit his eclectic Web site, www.billyrhythm.com.