How to read your web stats
By Mitch Tarr

[Ed. note: Mitch Tarr is IMC's Vice-President of Marketing. When he's not busy helping Derek run the show, you can find him hanging out and offering advice in The Internet Entrepreneur Club, www.marketingtips.com/internetentrepreneurclub]

Do you know how to read your web stats? If not, now's the time to learn!

Today I'm going tell you how to analyze your website stats so you can get the full picture on how your visitors are using your site -- where they're coming from, what they're doing on your site, and what you can do to make sure your site is achieving its main objective: converting those visitors into SALES.

(Note: If you don't already have a web analytics program operating on your site, I suggest you get one right away. A great free program is Google Analytics. You can find out more about it here: http://www.google.com/analytics)

The most important thing for you to know is how many people are coming to your site -- and what they're doing there.

But discovering this information is trickier than you may think, even when you have a comprehensive stats package like Google Analytics. That's because there are a number of different stats you can look at -- and they all tell you different things.

(Note: I've put stars beside the numbers that are most important.)

Hits

I mention this one mostly so I can tell you to ignore it! Your "hits" count is the LEAST reliable statistic available. Hits occur any time someone downloads a file from the server hosting your website. But most web pages are made up of more than one file. A "hit" could be anything from a banner ad... a graphic... a digital photo... or the web page itself.

Some of your web pages might register as two hits. Some might count as twenty! That's why we don't recommend you track your hits. They simply aren't a good way to measure how many people are coming to your site.

Page Views

Page views give you a better idea of the level of activity on your site. They show you how many of your web pages are being viewed by your visitors.

However, to make this kind of information meaningful, you have to think of it in terms of relative numbers instead of absolutes. Discovering your site received 20,000 page views in a week doesn't tell you a whole lot.

But knowing your site had 4.29 page views per visitor during that week tells you a lot more. You now know that your visitors clicked to four different pages on your site (on average). This gives you an idea of how "sticky" your site is.

If your site has a long salesletter on it, you don't want your site to have a high page-view-per-visitor count. That's because you want to keep your visitors glued to your salesletter, not meandering from page to page all over your site.

** Unique visitors, or visits

This stat is most likely to equal a real person on your site. But even it doesn't tell you exactly how many people are coming to your site.

For example, let's say a bunch of your visitors are using the same computer in a library or online cafe. Because they're all coming from the same IP address, all those visitors will be counted as one person. Still, it's as accurate a count as you're going to get.

New visitors

These are visitors who have never come to your site before. Or have they?

It's possible the same people are coming to your site from different IP addresses, and therefore being counted as "new." Maybe they're using a different computer, or using IP "masking" software that shows them coming from a rotating number of different IP addresses.

** Returning visitors

This is a good number to keep your eye on. It tells you what percentage of your visitors have been to your site before. If they're coming back, it's a good sign that they like what they're finding on your site. So generally speaking, the higher the percentage of returning visitors, the "stickier" your site is.

Average time on site

This shows you how long your visitors tend to stay on your site. If the average time is less than a minute, then clearly your visitors aren't finding what they're looking for on your site. If they stick around for five or more minutes, however, they're obviously finding something to interest them.

** Percentage of opt-ins per visit

This number tells you how many of your visitors are signing up for your opt-in offer. It's one of the most important numbers for you to track. Obviously, you want to keep tweaking your opt-in offer so you get as high a percentage of opt-ins possible!

How do you tweak your opt-in offer? Here are some ideas: Try putting it in different places on your site. Tweak the wording of your offer to see if that makes a difference. You may even want to experiment with entirely different opt-in offers, until you find the one that holds the most appeal for your visitors.

**Percentage of sales per visit

When it come to stats, this one is KING. It tells you what percentage of your visitors are actually buying from you. If you only track one number, this is the one to watch. Clearly you want to do whatever you can to make that number go up!

**Referring sites

These numbers show you where your traffic is coming from. This information is essential for your traffic generation strategies.

Focus on the traffic sources that are giving you the highest visitor/sales conversion rates. Are they search engines? Affiliates? Article directories?

Spend more time getting MORE traffic coming from those places -- and your sales are guaranteed to go up!

For example, take a look at your search engine reports. If you're getting lots of traffic from Google, but it's not converting -- and you're getting just a small amount of traffic from Yahoo, but it is converting really well -- then that's a sign you should be putting some effort into getting more traffic coming to your site from Yahoo.

**Top keywords

Most stats analysis packages will tell you which keywords are generating the highest-converting traffic for you.

Be sure to doublecheck them with a keyword research tool like Wordtracker (www.wordtracker.com). You'll want to make sure lots of people are actually doing searches on those keywords. You don't want to waste your time optimizing your site for keywords no one is searching on!

So those are the main numbers your stats package will give you. Depending on your package, you may get access to a lot more information than what I've described here. But if you're just starting out and need to know the basics about your site, this should give you a good start.

Happy number crunching!