What Do You Look For When Tracking Your Visitors?
Many online entrepreneurs are increasingly realizing that
tracking & analysing their traffic can make all the difference
for their business. In simple terms, trying to market your
business online without tracking your visitor is like trying to
drive a car in total darkness.
With the high number of tracking tools available online these
days, there is really no excuse for anybody failing to track
their visitors to find out where their traffic is coming from
and what visitors are doing on your website.
But even for those tracking their website traffic, the question
is how do they analyse their tracking data and does the
information really benefit them and their marketing efforts?
Do you know how all your visitors found you? Most site owners
are delighted to receive traffic from a new source. However, few
will bother to find out conclusively how their link ended up at
the referring site in the first place.
The whole question as to how your visitors found you is so
important that it is worth trying to gather as much information
as possible. The answer will be very important in helping you do
an even better job of getting more traffic to your site.
For example if a webmaster decided to post one of your free
articles on their site, it is very useful to know why they
picked your article over the hundreds of other possible articles
about this topic. This little piece of information alone can
help you get a major breakthrough in your marketing efforts.
Do you look for trends in your unique visitors? What are the
general trends at your site concerning unique visitors? Is
traffic heavy at particular times, days, weeks or months? And if
so, why? Actually, like most research findings it should lead
you to ask even more questions and endeavour to answer them.
Many times, particular trends have helped businesses develop new
products as well as find valuable new market niches for their
existing products and services. Even answers that may appear to
be obvious need to be verified.
Do you use your findings to constantly test your website? Would
you like to know the real secret behind those highly successful
online entrepreneurs? What sets them apart from the rest who
struggle all the way? It is actually something so simple and so
obvious that most people miss it, even when it is staring them
in the face.
The difference is that those really successful businesses are
constantly improving by introducing little changes all the time
that individually may make very little difference, but put
together helps the business grow in huge leaps and bounds. You
will be absolutely amazed at how frequently leading marketers
are testing new things online. They will test anything, from
using certain headlines to colors and design. And a lot of these
tests emerge from analysing the tracking data of their website
traffic.
The information you generate from monitoring your website
traffic will only be useful if you put it to use by constantly
testing and improving your business on the base of your data.
What content or articles are the most popular at your site? This
seemingly obvious one is missed most of the time. But why is it
important to find your most popular content on a regular basis?
Content is at the heart of what your site is. Visitors come to
your site because of the content. Popular content will tell you
a lot of things about your traffic. Including what interests
your visitors the most. This will go a long way in helping you
to adjust the content of your site so that you give your
visitors more of what they want.
In essence a successful site is one that constantly evolves in
response to customer needs and requirements. So how do you do
this when you are not monitoring what your visitors like the
most at your site? How will you evolve without constant and
regular analysis of your tracking data?
Tracking data is at the heart of your success. Analyzing and
responding to traffic data from your site is at the heart of
successful web sites. It is a task that is critical and very
important. It is an opportunity that you cannot care to miss out
on and one with enormous rewards for you and your site.
Article by David Callan. David is a search engine consultant
currently working with Red Sky's Web design Ireland team. Red Sky
are a leading provider of professional Web design and
development services in Ireland.