Improve Website Performance

Many hosting companies provide their clients with some web traffic information that can be used to analyze what visitors are doing once they access your website.

Look at the data provided for average daily, weekly, and monthly visits. first, understand there is a difference between hits and unique visits.

Hits can be valuable information only if you realize that each hit does not refer to a specific visit. Hits refers to all the files that are opened when a visitor comes to your webpage. Each webpage has many elements. For instance if you have four graphics on a webpage that could register four hits. Look for unique visits to get an accurate idea of your website traffic.

We, as home based online business owners, all want to get lots of traffic. But, just getting a lot of traffic will not necessarily spell success. What are those visitors doing when they access your website? This is what analyzing the data will point out to you, and a sampling from a lot of traffic will be more accurate than a sampling from a small amount of traffic. But in the beginning, you just have to work with what you've got and try to make improvements on that basis and move on.

Check to see how long visitors are at your site once they access your pages. Which pages do they leave quickly? If they leave your site quickly, or leave a particular page quickly you should try to analyze why. To leave a page quickly because it is simply access to where you want them to go is one thing. If the page they are leaving abruptly is a page you want them to linger on, then maybe you should try to analyze what you could do to make that page better, and more adequately meet their needs.

Sometimes visitors will surprise you by spending lengthy periods of time on pages that were not built to capture their interest for very long. This is a time to take stock and assess what your visitors are really looking for. Many times what we, as webmasters, think will capture interest does not work out. Review this and consider what your visitors find interesting and build content to fill that need.

Look at the keywords, and the search terms they are putting in that brought them to your site. You may find that what they are looking to find is not what you are providing, and the terms they use are far afield of what you expected. This is an opportunity to create pages to fulfill their interest.

Basically this is an exercise in finding out what visitors want and providing it. Always be flexible and willing to make changes. Setting up a website is usually done on a best guess system based on keyword research. Once your site is live and receiving traffic your visitors will make corrections and show you how to best serve them if you are willing to go with the flow, leave your ego out of it, and provide for their needs and wants.

Use this information to your best advantage. Make adjustment where it is needed, provide what they are looking for, and watch your traffic stats climb.