How “good” is your website ACTUALLY performing?

So we’ve all been hearing more and more about how important it is for every business to have a website.  Absolutely, there is truth in this – although as I mentioned in a previous article, it is even more important to ensure that you have the right type of website for your particular business. However, the other component that is equally important when it comes to websites is commonly referred to as “Stats”.  Stats are the statistical information that is gathered on a website to basically “track” its progress, effectiveness and use.

When it comes to tracking these stats on a website, the process and information gets way more complicated, confusing and misleading than traditional media tracking ever was.

“Pfft, ya right! It’s way easier! My web designer gave me a site that I login to and it tells me everything I need to know about all of the traffic I’m getting on my website – bang, just like that! I don’t have to do a thing!”

If nothing else, my dedicated readers are certainly learning that I am not out here to dazzle you with bright lights and shiny objects. The information I bring to you is based on a combination of research, education and experience. This time I’m here to caution you on being “wowed” by “amazing” website “stats” – either yours or other sites.

1. Average users and business owners have very limited knowledge (if any) of the terminology used in “stats”.
2. They don’t know the definitions of the terminology and therefore also can’t determine when “common” use words are being used to replace actual representation terms.

Here are some websites that offer glossaries of the different “stats” terminology:
http://awstats.sourceforge.net/docs/awstats_glossary.html

http://www.surfstats.com/glossary.asp

http://www.motive.co.nz/glossary/hits.php

http://www.webtrends.com/Education/Glossary

The sites above contain a great deal of technical information, most of which the average user really doesn’t need to understand.  However, they all offer the same basic description of some of the key terms that every website owner should understand.

Hits – total number of file/graphic images requested as a result of a computer accessing your website

Visitors – number of computers that have accessed your website (includes multiple visits by the same computer)

Unique Visitors – counts each computer’s IP address that accesses your website only once

Page Views – the number of times pages within your website have been looked at

Traffic - On the web, traffic refers to the amount of data sent and received by visitors to a website.  However, most people think of “website traffic” in the same way that they think of people walking into their physical store.

“Hits are commonly misinterpreted as a metric for website success, however the number of hits rarely translates to the number of people visiting a website. Nor are the number of hits the same as the number of webpages viewed.”  (http://www.motive.co.nz/glossary/hits.php)

This statement pretty much says it all.  So what exactly do you need to pay attention to on your website stats?

1. Unique visitors – this tells you more accurately how many sets of eyeballs are looking at your website. However, as with all statistics, take it with a grain of salt.  A family of 4 with one computer will count as 1 unique visitor for 4 sets of eyeballs. A business “network” that is setup to report the same IP address for every workstation could count as 1 unique visitor for hundreds of eyeballs.  On the other hand an individual with 2 laptops, a home pc and a work pc that accesses your website from all four computers will count as 4 unique visitors for one set of eyeballs.
   
   
2. Visitors – this number tells you how many times computers access your website, including repeat visits by the same computer and/or the same person. Unfortunately it won’t separate out how many of those visits are by the same person or different people on the same computer. 
   
   However, a good “stat” package will tell you the comparison between “unique visitors” and “repeat visitors”, using these two numbers together will give you the best overall picture of the “walk-in traffic” your website is getting. (Having a new person visit your website is good – unique visitor; having that same new person come back is also good – visitor.)
   
   
3. Page Views – this number can give you a good idea of how many pages within your website are getting eyeballs.  However, it may also include the bored (or excessively young) user that repeatedly hits refresh on your page because you have a cool image that changes every time the page reloads.
   
   Again, a good “stat” package will give you a breakdown of how many times “each” page is viewed, not just a total page count and better yet is pattern tracking that will tell you what path they took from when they first arrived at your site. For example: Home page to Services page to About Us page to Price List page to Services page to Contact Us page.

What you don’t want to rely on is whatever the “Hits” are being reported as. For a site to boast 80,000 hits a month, week or even day could mean nothing more than 1,600 pages that are loaded with 50 “hit points” per page (graphics, files, etc). Over the course of a month this could mean an average of 54 page views per day, which could be based on access by 9 computers averaging 6 page views per day. If it’s the same 9 computers every day and the same people using those computers, your 80,000 hits per month could actually only mean 9 sets of eyeballs per month.  Even if the 80,000 hits is based on per day traffic, if each unique visitor averages 6 page views per day this would still only calculate out to 267 unique visitors per day – a nice number for a local business, but a far cry for the 80,000 claimed. These are extreme examples, but they do illustrate the point of how easy it is to manipulate the information and dazzle average users who don’t fully understand the jargon.

If you really want to delve in deeper to understand the mechanics behind website statistics, this is a really good, easier to understand site: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_analytics.

At the end of the day, be very cautious about being “wowed” by website statistics – while some truly are impressive, most are simply over-inflated and misleading.