The Importance of Web Stats Programs

Many website owners don't realize the importance of web stats. They are only concerned with page hits or page views. While this is an important factor, there are more stats that need to be considered when running your own web site.

Because many web stats programs give you so much information, it's sometimes hard for new webmasters to decipher and actually use any of the information. Because of this, they often abandon the more sophisticated programs and opt for a less intuitive one such as a page hit counter.

Web stats programs can provide plenty of information, the ones that are most important are listed below.

Traffic Sources - Knowing where your traffic comes from will let you know how your SEO efforts are doing. You may also be able to tell who is linking to your site.

Top Content - This statistic allows you to rate your content based on how well it performs. If one page on your site performs very well, you may consider altering other pages to mimic your top pages. Also consider if this is an ecommerce site and it's a product page, allowing visitors an incentive if they are not currently buying the product.

Exit Pages - At which point does a visitor decide that they want to leave your website? This statistic allows you to know. Knowing which pages drive traffic away from your site is one of the best statistics in my opinion because it allows you to find problem areas in your site and work on ways to keep visitors browsing.

Entrance Pages - While it's important to know where your visitors come from, it's equally important to know which pages they initially land on. This statistic can help improve your SEO efforts if you know which pages are more popular and reach farther into the internet community than other pages.

New Visitors or Loyalty - Knowing how many visitors are new visitors and how many are returning visitors is the loyalty statistic. If you're running a forum, this is one of the important statistics if you're trying to build a community. Knowing your users are coming back and visiting the forums can be a key to your forum success.