Hits are really a reference for how many files are being downloaded from the web server. In the days when web pages only had one file associated with them, it made more sense to use hits as a measure of traffic on a website. These days one web page is made up of many different files. Each file downloaded is considered one hit. How many files (hits) per page can vary greatly. So it doesn’t make sense to use hits for measuring traffic any more (unless you want to know how much you’re using your web server).
Jun
29
2009
Ask Sazbean – Why Shouldn’t I Use Hits to Measure Traffic on My Website?
Apr
08
2009
Web-based Tools We Use Everyday
We’re an Internet company, so we’re on the nets pretty much all the time. Many of the tools we use every day and couldn’t work without are web-based. We thought we’d share them and find out what you use and like.
Analytics, Statistics & SEO (oh my!)
- HitTail
- Google Analytics
- Google WebMaster Tools
- FeedBurner
- Website Grader
- Twitter Grader
- WHOIS
- SEOQuake
Firefox plugins/clients
Productivity
Images & Design
News
Social Media
What are your favorite tools?
(photo by batega @ Flickr CC)
Technorati tags: analytics, web tools, productivity, social media, business, SEO, marketing
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Mar
13
2009
TwitterCounter – Stats for Your Tweets
Ever wish you could get stats on your Twitter feed like you can with Google Analytics for your website and RSS feed? TwitterCounter shows you your number of followers by day for the previous week, month or 3 months, including average growth and future growth estimations. By installing their TwitterRemote widget on your blog or website you can see which Twitter users recently visited. The widget is fully customizable and is very similar to widgets such as MyBlogLog. A little badge which updates with your number of followers on Twitter is also available.
TwitterCounter has thought a lot about promoting its own services – just about everything has a link so you can tweet the results. Also available is a paid featured spot as the example account on the homepage and linked to throughout the site.
Technorati tags: twitter, social media, social networking, statistics, analytics
Mar
02
2009
Statistics are Vital to Marketing
Last week I posted about attaching dollars to statistics in order to make sense of them (and to relate them to how your business is doing). During a discussion about the article, someone mentioned that it was a great non-marketing post. I didn’t really respond at the time, but the statement has bothered me since. Statistics are vital to marketing. Without statistics, marketing is just a hit-or-miss blanket approach without a strategy and end-goal. Statistics are how you know what is working and what should be improved (or dropped) and figuring out the next step to achieving your business goals.
Using statistics properly will show how various marketing efforts are affecting your bottom line (return on investment – ROI) so you can figure out how much to spend – and on what. You’ll also learn more about your customers, your product, and your business. Statistics can give you information about how to improve your product, how to increase customer satisfaction and what your business is doing well.
Many people think of marketing as a soft, touchy-feely pseudo-science, but done properly, marketing should be just as measureable as other business processes and should provide vital information to run your business.
(photo by chantrybee @ FlickrCC)
Feb
25
2009
Want Your Statistics To Make Sense? Attach Dollars
Impressions, page views, hits, visits, unique visitors, clicks, CTR, conversions… what do they all mean? Unless you can translate them into how you’re doing business, they’re just numbers… and pretty useless ones at that. While using the Internet to help your business may be relatively cheap, you still should understand what efforts are working and which are not. Most Internet strategies require iterative improvements to get the most out of them – and that means knowing where you’re making money and where you’re not.
Every statistic should be related to the money you’re making. If you’re selling things online, this is a bit easier, since you can track how many sales you’re making and how much per sale versus how many page views, visits, clicks, etc. If you’re using the Internet to advertise your products or services, hopefully you have some way to collect leads online – or at least track that they came from online. Then you should be able to figure out how many leads you get for how many actual sales (your $), which you then can relate to how many page views, clicks, etc. it took to get those.
As an example, many clients think they are doing really well with Internet advertising, but when we take a look at how much money they’re getting per conversion, click, etc., we often find that they’re spending more per conversion than they’re selling their product for. It’s often hard to see this at first glance because people tend to look at overall spending when deciding what’s working. If I spend $500 per month on Google ads, but I make $5000 per month, I might not think that’s a bad return. But if you take a closer look, you may be getting most of your sales from other places, and you’re spending $500/month and not actually making anything from that traffic (if you’re spending more than you’re getting).
We all have a limited amount of time in our day. If you can attach dollars to your Internet statistics, it will help you understand where you need to make changes, what’s working, and how to move forward.
(photo by theritters @ Flickr CC)
Technorati tags: analytics, business, marketing, ROI, statistics
Feb
02
2009
Are You Measuring the Right Metrics?
Avinash Kaushik had a great post this morning about the different types of keywords visitors use to reach your site, what their intentions are, and how to measure keyword effectiveness based on where customers are in the sales funnel. This got me thinking about metrics in general. I often hear people complain that they are not getting enough hits to their website (which is a very outdated metric in any case). But when you ask them what goal/objective they are trying to measure, they usually cannot tie the two together.
From both a business and sanity point of view, it is imperative that you use metrics that will give you the information you need. For example, if you are trying to measure whether or not your website is giving you leads, the number of hits isn’t the right number. You need a way to collect leads from your website, or some way to tell if people were there (an offer unique to the website) to measure lead generation from your website.
So before you start pouring over your web and advertising statistics, take a moment to figure out exactly what it is that you’re trying to find out. Then decide what metric will help you answer that question. Matching up metrics and goals/questions/objectives will give you much more reliable informaton – saving time and resources and allowing you to focus on efforts that are actually working for your business.
(photo by aussiegall @ Flickr CC)
Technorati Tags: analytics, statistics, internet marketing, metrics, business, marketing
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