When I check my site statistics – I get a WEALTH of information – you need to check your stats out, too – you can reclaim lost traffic, find out the sites people go to most, and better your traffic.
For instance, when I look at the “errors” information, I see sites people “tried” to go to but found there to be no site, or perhaps tried to send an email to a wrong address – you can now make a copy of a real page and save it as the error page, or rename it on FTP and then upload the real page back.
If people try to hit a site called www.domain.com/subscribercount.html- but your site address is supposed to be www.domain.com/subscribercount.htm or www.domain.com/subscriptioncount.html then just make a page with that name – using the same site as the real one they were supposed to go to. It is likely that there was a typo in an ad, or someone linked to your site and made a typo, or in some way it’s easy for a surfer to make the typo. You can also create a new email address using the wrong address which was used, provided you haven’t used all your email choices.
If you look at the access logs – this will tell you which pages were accessed by any visitor, and perhaps some more useful information. You can see which sites are being looked at – from the standpoint of what may be popular, or what may be from a referral link on your site. You can now assess if the sites accessed are pulling in only traffic that leaves, or are they bringing in sales? You need to beef up the selling point if people are only looking and leaving.
If you code your pages, you can see how well an advertising campaign did. Were you able to get hits from an ad you sent out? If no or minimal hits, you can be certain it was either the ad that was bad or useless to the audience, or the avenue you chose to advertise in has a bad response rate. If you got hits but no sales – you’ll need to adjust either your ad (somehow people did not find at the site what they expected from the ad), or your site needs work in order to entice a sale.
Look at your referrals – those sites that referred traffic to yours. This can tell you which search engines or PPC’s work for you, or which other sites link to you, or in some cases which advertisements brought in hits, or you can see which of your own sites people chose to visit from – this will help you fine-tune your strategies and target your visitors better. You may be able to see the search terms that people input to find your site – that will tell you if people are looking for the right things on your site. I’ll go into this with my next example.
I see plenty of hits to our birthday and themes sites, – from people looking for something like “Veggie Tales posters” or certain types of theme cake pans or piatas – which are not exactly on the sites – but hey – I can now go search for a source of those and add them in as more items for visitors to choose from, and to perhaps make a sale when the next visitor drops in with a similar search. Or an even better idea – set up an interactive search box or email form so people can ask for a specific type of item – and let me get back to them when I find it! This is an invaluable tool to let you know what people want when they come to your site – somehow our site is listed as providing Veggie Tales posters – but no wonder it’s not making sales if the site doesn’t offer them! I still need to find a source for Veggie Tales posters, but I can then offer them to the visitors who come again via the same search topics. If the site is listed as a provider – become a provider of that.
Find out your site statistics and get a better handle on site visitors and searches – and increase your sales, plus save traffic that was leaving!
P. Roe does website optimization work, and is working on her sites all the time – many are in number 1-10 ranking on Google and Yahoo! Subscribe to “Wise Little Tidbits” for more optimization tips. mailto:ezineshere@aol.com?WLT http://doubleii.com/webservices.htm