Online Marketing From Home

First of all, sorry for the blunt title ‘HITS – How Idiots Track Searches’…

I received an email this week from one of my list members about the meaning of ‘hits’ and thought it’s a good idea to post my reply to him on my blog as well.

Many new webmasters are misled into believing that Hits = Visitors. They think that 10,000 hits mean their website will get 10,000 visitors.

It is true that when a web page opens it is considered as a hit. However, if you have three graphics on that page, each of those will be counted as a hit as well. The reason is that each one has to be downloaded separately from the server to be seen. In other words, in this case 1 Click = 4 Hits!

This is one of the main reasons why ‘hit counters’ are so ineffective although I have noticed that a lot of webmasters are still using them.

Based on the above, the number of hits your site receives every day is irrelevant, hence my title ‘HITS – How Idiots Track Searches’. What is important is the number of VISITORS you get!  

I use Google Analytics on my sites. First of all, it is free and secondly, it provides me with some great statistics, such as:

- Number of Visits
- Unique Visitors
- Page Views
- Pages per Visit
- % New Visits
- Average Time on Site
- Traffic Sources

Let’s quickly have a look at the significance of some of these statistics:

Number of Visits, Unique Visitors and % New Visits

Although the ‘number of visits’ is important, remember that one visitor may visit your site several times a month. You need to know how many ‘unique visitors’ you are getting.

A high percentage of ‘new visits’ is not necessarily good… It may be an indication that most visitors never return to your site. This may be normal if you have a sales site and they have bought your product. However, if you have a content rich site it may indicate a problem… Your site may not be sticky enough (no reason for people to return).

In order to get a clear idea of what is happening you have to monitor and compare your statistics on a monthly basis.

Page Views and Pages per Visit

This is obviously not important if you have a one page sales website. However, if you have a 100 page content website it is very important.

Although it is not realistic to expect a visitor to visit all 100 pages you have reason to be concerned if the average visitor only visits 1.2 pages! (For example, when you get 120 page views and 100 visits).

There may be several reasons for this, including:

- Your internal links are not properly displayed.

People do not have the time to search for links! Make sure your links are properly displayed. In addition, include links to other pages in the body of your content.

- Your site content is too wide or not targeted enough.

Assume your site is about pets. This is too wide. You may get a visitor that is looking for information on getting a dog as a pet. However, it is unlikely this visitor will visit other pages on your site about cats, birds, etc.

It is a very common mistake made by new webmasters to go too wide…

Average Time On Site

It is a well known fact that you only have a couple of seconds to grab the attention of a visitor.

If the average visitor only stays 10 seconds on your page you have a problem! It can be an indication that he or she did not find what they were looking for. It can also be a case of your page loading too slowly (too many graphics, etc.). Hey, it is even possible that your page layout is in such a mess or your site is so ugly that nobody likes it!

Use this statistic to make improvements and test the results of these improvements.   

Traffic Sources

I have a problem understanding why so many webmasters do not track their traffic…

I want to know how many visitors I get from Google and what keywords they use to find my site. I want to know how many visitors I get from posting on forums and blogs. I want to know how many visitors I get from doing social bookmarking and what sites give me the best results, etc.

Two more things that I want to mention…

Setting up Goals

It is very easy and quick to set up ‘goals’ using Google Analytics.

For example, if I have a sales page and a download page (that can only be reached after payment has been made), I can set it up that every time someone reaches my download page it is recorded as a ‘goal’. It gives me very valuable information on how well my sales page is converting.

For more info visit Goals and Funnels

Block your own traffic by setting up a filter

Once your site starts getting thousands of visitors every month or even every day your own visits really become irrelevant from a statistical point of view.

However, your own visits can be a problem when you have a brand new site that is only being visited 10 times a day, and 5 of those visits are you!  

I recommend that you use the ‘Filter Manager’ function in Google Analytics to block traffic from your own IP address from being shown in your statistics. It will only take you a minute to set it up.

For more info visit Filters

The next time you hear someone saying how many hits he or she gets every day I trust you will remember this short post about hits - How Idiots Track Searches. Sorry again for the rude title. If you can find a better word that starts with an ‘I’ to replace ‘Idiots’ please let me know. :) 

To YOUR Online Marketing Success!

Francois du Toit

This entry was posted on Saturday, February 23rd, 2008 at 4:49 pm and is filed under Traffic. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.