How to Read a Traffic Report

By viewing your website's traffic report you can obtain valuable information about the visitors to your website. You will be able to find out where they are coming from, how long they are staying, and what they are looking at while they are on your site. This information can help you to market your website more efficiently and reveal areas that need improvement.

Step 1

Log into the control panel of your website or other traffic report interface such as Urchin. Click "Stats," "Logs" or "Analyze." The wording will vary depending upon the program you are using.

Step 2

Select "Daily" or "Monthly" statistics. You will be able to expand the daily and monthly average statistics to get greater details such as the time of day you are getting the most visits. You may have to click on the daily or monthly stats link to expand the details.

Step 3

Look at the "Visits" data to see the number of unique visitors your website has received on a daily and monthly basis. The "Pages" data will tell you how many pages your combined visitors have viewed while visiting your site. This information will let you know if visitors are actually browsing your website. If you have 10 visits and only 10 pages viewed out of the 20 pages you have on your site, visitors are not thoroughly browsing your site; they are viewing one page and leaving.

Step 4

View the URL "Entry" and "Exit" stats in the traffic report to see what pages most of your visitors are using to enter and leave your website. You can also view the "Referring" URL stats to see where the visitors are coming from. This will reveal if they are finding you through search engines, links from other websites, or by typing your address manually into their address bar. This information is useful for marketing. If you are not getting many visitors from search engines, you should consider optimizing your website to improve search engine rankings.

Step 5

View the "User" or "System" stats to get information regarding the operating systems and browsers your visitors are using. If the majority of your users are using Firefox and you have a website that is not Firefox-friendly, you should make changes to your website design to ensure that it is compatible.

Step 6

View the "Country" or "Geography" statistics to see where your website visitors are located.

References

• Web Marketing Advice

About the Author

Faizah Imani, an educator, minister and published author, has worked with clients such as Harrison House Author, Thomas Weeks III, Candle Of Prayer Company and "Truth & Church Magazine." Her dossier includes JaZaMM WebDesigns, assistant high-school band director, district manager for the Clarion Ledger and event coordinator for the Vicksburg Convention Center.