Analyzing Conversion On Your Web Site:

One of the great things about the web is that it's easier than ever in business history to find out how you're doing. Web analytics let you peer under the hood of your site, find out what's working and then make it work better.

Here are two common web analytics terms.

Visitors versus Unique Visitors

When you look at the records for your site you're likely to see two, similar terms. Knowing the difference will help you make sense of some of your web statistics.

The measurement, "Visitor" counts the number of visits to your site. If I visit and then leave and return later, most analytics programs will count that as two "Visitors" or, sometimes, two "Visits."

In the same situation, the term "Unique Visitors" would count me as one unique visitor. Your measure of "Unique Visitors" will tell you how many individuals stopped by your site in a specified time period.

Page Views

What we know about human behavior supports the idea that when people stay on your site for a while, browsing and clicking, they're more likely to buy or take other actions you want. One way to figure out if they're doing that is to look at page view statistics.

Just as you may expect, a "Page View" is counted each time a visitor views a page on your site. The ratio Page Views per Unique Visitor will tell you how many pages the average visitor looked at.

These are rough measures of activity. Watch the general trend. Are you getting more visitors? Are they exploring the site more? You'll need other measures to find out what they're doing while they're on your site.

Analyze Your Inbound Links

You can find out a lot about your web site and your business by analyzing the links that come into your site. There are four types of inbound links: search sites, ads, affiliates, and other sites and blogs.

According to some studies, 80 percent of all web users start their search for information or products on one of the search sites, like Google or Yahoo. Which sites are driving traffic to your site? What keywords are visitors using to find you? Are they looking for you, looking for a generic kind of business, or looking for a brand name?

Which of your ads are driving traffic to your site? What messages seem to be working? This will be especially valuable for you if you're using split-run tracking to test ads and placement.

Affiliate marketing is a lot like paying finders' fees or commissions for business sent to you by third parties. On the web, we call those third parties "affiliates."

Other sites and blogs can send you visitors, too. Are there any sites or blogs sending you a lot of business? They are candidates for cross-promotion. Take a look at the traffic you're getting from your own sites and from placing articles on distribution sites.

There's no secret formula for analyzing your inbound links. Instead, look at the data in different ways. Look for ideas about what you should do more or less of. Seek out ideas for ways to increase traffic or decrease marketing cost.

The tools we've talked about here will give you a good idea of how many people are coming to your site, how they got here and what they seem to be looking for. In another article we'll cover how you analyze their activity once they're on your site.