Since the 2 most popular web statistics tools are Webalizer (http://www.webalizer.com) and AWStats (http://www.awstats.net), this article will focus on how to analyze traffic reports generated by the 2 tools.

Before we start looking into the features of these 2 tools, let’s define the terms used on the traffic reports.

Hits

Hits are ‘the total number of requests made to your server during a given time period.’ When a visitor comes to your website, each item on your website constitutes a request. So if you have only four graphics files on your homepage, the report will register four hits whenever someone visits your site. Usually, webmasters ignore the number of hits because it is not related to the number of visitors.

Files

Files are slightly different from hits. According to Webalizer, ‘Files represent the total number of hits (requests) that actually resulted in something being sent back to the user. Not all hits will send data, such as 404-Not Found requests and requests for pages that are already in the browsers cache.’ Similarly, the number of files does not give an accurate measurement of the number of visitors.

Sites

Sites. A site is a unique IP address that makes a request to your server, and is different a unique visitor. Since a visitor can come from many IP addresses, or many visitors can share the same IP address, this number does not give an accurate reflection of your site popularity.

Visits

Visits. According to Webalizer, ‘a visit occurs when some remote site makes a request for a page on your server for the first time.’ In other words, this number shows you the total number of visits to your site, and includes repeat visitors.

Unique Visits

Unique visits. Since the number of unique visitors to your site does not include repeat visitors, it’s the best measurement of the popularity of your site. This number should not be confused with the total number of visits, which includes repeat visitors. This is one of the most important numbers on your traffic report.

In short, the number of unique visitors each month is the value you should look out for. It shows you the effectiveness of your latest web promotion tactic. For example, if you notice a spike in the number of visitors after sending an email promotion, then you’ll know that this marketing technique is effective.

The number of unique visitors per month and also lets you calculate the conversion rate of your business, by taking:

Total number of customers per month / Total number of unique visitors per month.

You can also calculate other important values like:

Visitor Value: Total profit per month / Total number of unique visitors per month.

Cost of each visitor: Total marketing cost per month / Total number of unique visitors per month.

These 2 numbers, the visitor value and the cost of each visitor, are especially important factors to consider if you use Pay-Per-Click (PPC) advertising to drive traffic to your website. The simple rule of thumb is that you cannot afford to let the cost of each visitor exceed the visitor value, to ensure that your business is generating profits and not losses.

This is one of the important reasons why you need to have traffic reports and be able to analyze the total number of unique visitors. With traffic statistics tools, you also need to analyze:

Top URLs

The top URLs of your website shows the popularity of each individual page on your website. You’ll understand which of your pages are most frequently viewed, and which pages are not visited at all.

Top Referrers

The top referrers show the source of your traffic. Do your visitors come from a search engine, from an external page or by direct address? This section of the traffic statistics shows you exactly that.

Search Strings/ Keyphrases

Which are the top phrases that visitors use in the search engines like Google and Yahoo to reach your site? Since the top search phrases shows you what the majority of your visitors were searching for, it’s critical to apply search engine optimization (SEO) techniques for these phrases, so that your site can rank higher for these keywords.

Visit Duration

AWStats displays the visit duration of your visitors. The time the visitor spends on your site is categorized into ‘0s-30s’, ‘30s-2mn’, ‘2mn-5mn’, ‘5mn-15mn’, ‘15mn-30mn’, ‘30mn-1h’ and ‘1h+’. This shows you how well you can keep your visitors at your website. In general, the longer the duration stay, the higher the chance you’ll make sales.

To conclude, having a strong understanding of your web statistics is necessary for any online business. It helps you to judge the effectiveness of your marketing efforts, and also tell you the source of your visitors. Understanding such traffic statistics is an integral part of growing and expanding your business.