Understanding the Basics of Website Statistics

One of the questions that I often get when it comes to online communication/website design, is "How can I measure results?" One way to measure results is by taking a look at your web statistics before and after you make tweaks and alterations. You first want to have a goal in mind – increase the number of new or returning visitors, get more people to sign up for your newsletter, etc. Michelle Shaeffer provides an introduction to understanding website statistics is the following article.

For all the experts out there, what do you think are the most important elements to understanding and leveraging these statistics?

Article:

Learning to understand your website statistics can help you improve your website for visitors, measure if your promotional strategies are working, and find new opportunities to promote your business.

How can you measure your website statistics?

There are two common ways to measure this important information.

One is with software that analyzes the server logfiles. Each time someone visits your site the server records detailed information about the visitor and what they did on your website. With software like Webalyzer or AWStats that information is put into a form you can easily read and understand. Many website hosts offer this software already installed on their servers and available to clients through a cPanel or Plesk administrative area.

The second way to keep track of your stats is with a javascript added to all of your pages that sends info to another server each time a visitor loads a page, such as Google Analytics or Crazy Egg. With these services you sign up, then they provide a small snippet of code for you to copy and paste into your web pages. For WordPress sites you can install a special plugin to add Google Analytics or view visitor statistics.
You may want to combine both methods to get a better overall picture of who is visiting your website and what they're doing.

What do the terms mean?

Hits: Each request for a file from a server is counted as a hit. This is an often misunderstood term. It does not mean you’ve had 5,000 people visit your site if you have had 5,000 hits. If your page has one html file and five images on it, then each time a visitor loads the page it would count as six hits.

Page Views: How many times a "page" as defined in log analysis has been loaded. This is more accurate than hits because it will only count the .html or .php files instead of every image on a page.

Unique Visitors: This is an even more useful....

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Understanding the Basics of Website Statistics, by Michelle Shaeffer (@SmallBizMuse)