Archive for Traffic Statistics
See all the Traffic Statistics Posts
This last post on traffic statistics will discuss Content stats and some other helpful stats that may not be something you look at consistently.
Content Stats
Don’t you wish you could sit next to your website visitors while they’re on your website to figure out what they’re interested in?
I know I would. If your stats package doesn’t tell you outright, one way to get a lot of extensive information on that topic is to use something like Lucky Orange.
Using your traffic statistics doesn’t give you as much information, but does provide some good insight. You may have access to things like a ranking of the top pages that were visited on your website. If you’re wondering if anyone cares about that new page you added a few months ago, looking at where the page ranks in relation to the rest of your pages can give you some insight. You can also see where people first land on your site, and which pages they typically leave from.
Are you frustrated because no one is contacting you from a great page on your site that contains an absolutely compelling proposition that should be getting you lots of leads? Using Content stats, you can figure out if the page is getting much traffic.
If there is a lot of traffic and no one is contacting you, you should rethink that fantastic offer. If there is very little traffic on the page, you should review how you direct visitors to it. Is there a button on the home page? Should the button be bigger? Should it be a different color? Should it say something different? Have you linked to the great page from other pages wherever it makes sense? Have you written blog posts that have a natural way to link to the great page? And, well, you get the idea.
Other Stats
I’m not going to list all the other stats that are available, but here are some worth noting:
- Under Visitor Stats, you’ll find information on Screen Resolution. We’re currently designing real estate websites at about 1000px wide, or slightly less. Sometimes a client will want a site wide enough to fit their screen. If you look at the screen resolution of your visitors, you may find that half use a system with a much smaller monitor than yours. That means, if the site is very wide, those visitors will be forced to scroll sideways to read one page. People won’t do that, of course!
- If you don’t think your website needs to work on several different browsers, take a look at the Browser stats. You maybe surprised to learn that most people are not using Internet Explorer, or Firefox, or whatever. It’s split enough so that cross-browser compatibility is an absolute necessity.
- Mobile statistics can tell you how many people visited your website on a mobile device, which devices they’re using, how long they stayed on your site, etc.
Do you have a great way to use the Traffic statistics on your real estate website? Share them here!
See all the Traffic Statistics Posts
There are two other categories of traffic statistics that you can use to improve your real estate website.
Where Do Your Visitors Come From?
Knowing where your website visitors come from will help you understand the mindset of those visitors.
Direct Traffic – Direct traffic numbers represent the visitors who came to your website by typing in your domain name, or the URL for one of your pages. These types of visitors should absolutely want to be on your website since they know your domain name.
Referring Sites – These visitors should also be fairly targeted. They reached your website by clicking on a link to your site from another website. You should be able to see the specific page on a specific website that sent visitors to your pages.
Besides telling you something about your visitors, reviewing this information can point out websites that link to yours, and you may have no idea that the link is in place. Visiting some of these referral sources could give you ideas on other places where you could get a similar link. You can also nurture your incoming links. Let’s say a blogger linked to one of your pages. You may want to drop a note to thank the blogger, start participating on their blog, and so forth.
You may also find incoming links that you would prefer not to have. I don’t think this happens all that often. But, imagine finding a link from a blog post on the ugliest websites on the ‘Net. There may be something you can do to head off bad press.
Sometimes I find that there is no link to my site from a referral page. It could be that a link was in place for a short period of time. One way to figure out where your link is without reading the entire page is to look at the Page Source, then search for your domain name.
Search Engine Traffic – Overall, search engines stats will tell you how popular your website is with the search engines. Obvious. But looking at those stats can be interesting. For example, you can compare your search engine visits with your ranking for various search terms. If you rank number one for a lot of searches, but the search engine brings you very few visitors, you have to ask yourself if you’re going after the right keyword phrases.
You can see the usual items such as seeing if there are certain times when the search engines bring less traffic, and you can track whether the search engines are sending you more or less traffic over a period of time.
Search Engine Keywords – This is one of the most interesting stats, in my opinion. Looking at this information will tell you how you’re ranking for your targeted keyword phrases. It will also show you long-tail terms that you may not have thought of targeting before. If you check the terms to make sure there’s sufficient traffic to be worthwhile, you can start optimizing pages for the term, writing blog posts about the topic, and so forth.
As I mentioned before, these posts can’t possibly identify every possible analysis you can do on every type of statistic. But, hopefully there will be examples that give you ideas for which stats to analyze and how to apply that analysis to your specific situation.
See all the Traffic Statistics Posts
Interpreting Overall Traffic Statistics
The Overall Traffic Statistics provide global information. Other posts in the series will talk about more specific Visitor Stats and Traffic Source and Content information.
These posts can’t possibly identify every possible analysis you can do on every type of statistic. But, hopefully there will be examples that give you ideas for which stats to analyze and how to apply that analysis to your specific situation.
1. Number of Visits, Visitors or Unique Visitors – You need to pick one of these statistics and keep track of the changes over time. Naturally, your goal over time is to increase the number of visits by implementing a marketing plan that might include improved SEO (Search Engine Optimization), Pay Per Click, social media, offline ways of driving traffic, etc. This statistic will tell you if those efforts are working.
Does your traffic increase when you send out a batch of postcards? If not, you’re either not making a strong call to action to get people to visit your site, or postcards aren’t effective for you. As you’ll see, using traffic statistics doesn’t mean that you’ll have all the answers. But, you will have the questions!
You can usually look at this statistic in large date ranges. Looking at the number of visits over a month, for example, will tell you if there are certain days or times of a month when your traffic is high. If you’re going to send out a newsletter, you’d want to schedule it for the times when traffic is highest. Evidently those times are when your prospects have the time to look at your website.
2. Number of Page Views – This is another overall indicator of how interesting your visitors think your website is. Your goal is to increase the number of page views over time. Looking at this stat in conjunction with the Number of Visitors will tell you if your overall traffic is headed in the right direction – up.
3. Number of Pages per Visit – This is an indicator of how interesting your visitors think your website is. If people don’t explore your website beyond the page on which they landed, you might assume that your site isn’t compelling enough.
4. Bounce Rate – if your bounce rate is very high, you might assume that your website isn’t very compelling.
5. Average Time on Site – If people don’t spend very much time on your website, you might assume that your website isn’t very compelling.
6. Percent New Visits – If you don’t have a high percentage of visitors who return often, you might assume that your website isn’t very compelling.
A Note About Items 3, 4, 5 and 6 – The assumptions noted above may be very valid. But, you need to analyze these stats in relation to one another, and in relation to some other statistics we’ll cover.
Keep in mind that a strict interpretation of these statistics is only valid if everyone who lands on your website is a potential lead. And, that almost never happens.
Think about this example:
- Seventy-five percent of your website traffic comes from search engines.
- Search engines send people to your website based on over 1000 keyword phrases.
How would that situation affect the interpretation of items 3, 4, 5 and 6?
- You’d have to assume that if people are landing on your website for over 1000 keyword phrases, a good portion of those phrases aren’t bringing targeted traffic. And, you can find out if that is the case looking at your Resource stats. You can’t control which phrases the search engines will rank you for. If you’re being ranked for random phrases out of your blog posts, that’s not going to bring targeted traffic.
- Therefore, it might be that half of the visitors to your site are there on purpose.
- So, if your Number of Pages per Visit is 2, you might assume that it is actually 4 if the non-targeted visitors were taken out of the equation.
- If your Bounce Rate is high, you might adjust it to a lower figure, knowing that all the non-targeted visitors are only going to look at one page no matter how great a website.
- If your Average Time on Site is low, you might adjust it to a higher figure, knowing that all the non-targeted visitors are only going to stay on the site for a few seconds, no matter how great a website.
Some people will strongly disagree with what I’ve just said. Some people use a strict interpretation of those three stats, regardless of other factors. I just don’t think that makes sense when you put all the stats together. For example, I think it can send people off on a wild goose chase trying to reduce their bounce rate when that particular stat might not be pointing to a way to improve the website overall.
I do think that these stats are helpful to spot trends and to make you question some things you might not otherwise question. But, my advice is not to get too hung up on one of those stats to the exclusion of all the other facts that relate to your website.
Stay tuned for future posts discussing other types of traffic statistics!
See all the Traffic Statistics Posts
Everyone wants to improve the effectiveness of their real estate website. Improved effectiveness means more leads and higher revenue. There are many ways to figure out how to improve your website. One method that is often overlooked is analyzing your traffic statistics and making changes accordingly.
I think the main reason why analyzing traffic statistics isn’t popular is that many people don’t know all the things traffic statistics can do, or how to analyze the statistics. So, to help alleviate that problem, this series of posts will describe various types of statistics you need to have access to and what you should do with them.
Types of Traffic Statistics You Need
Notice I said “types of statistics you need to have access to”. If you have a real estate website, here are things to keep in mind:
- Don’t work with a vendor who doesn’t supply information-rich traffic statistics, or at least some way for you to install your own statistics on the website.
- Don’t work with a vendor if the only type of statistics you can use are server-side statistics. If you’re in this situation, you’ll recognize products like AWStats, and you’ll be familiar with a set of stats that are basic enough to be called primitive.
- If you have a Point2 website, the Ultra Stats are based on the same system that is used by Google Analytics. So, you don’t need to add something like Google Analytics unless you need some of the features such as tracking Ad Word campaigns or tracking Events.
- Take the time to learn about the statistics you’re using, and recognize that terminology differs from system to system. Don’t make an assumption until you are certain you’re looking at what you think you’re looking at.
Statistics and What To Do with Them
First, we’ll define different types of statistics, then discuss what you can do with them.
Overall Traffic Statistics: These statistics are related to the overall traffic on your website, and you can usually look at the stats by day, week, month, etc. For this example, we’ll assume you are looking at daily stats:
- Number of Visits, Visitors, or Unique Visitors – Different terminology is used to identify the people that land on your website. Read the definitions of the terminology for your system. Here are some tips:
- Visitors can often equal the number of times someone lands on a page of your website.
- Unique visitors usually equal the number of different people who land on your website. So, you might have 100 Visitors, but only 75 Unique Visitors. That would mean that 75 people landed on your site 100 times because some of those Unique Visitors stopped by more than once.
- Don’t use any stat named “Hits”. If you’re seeing that term, your stat package is outdated for one thing. A hit is anything that is displayed by your web page, simply stated. So, if you have a page with 7 photos, 2 videos, etc. each of those things will count as a hit. Opening one page could generate 16 hits. Obviously, this stat tells you nothing.
- Number of Page Views – This is usually just what it says. If 100 visitors looked at 2 pages during their visit, your page views for that day would be 200.
- Number of Pages per Visit – This is usually just what it says. If 100 people looked at 2 pages each time they landed on your site, the number of pages per visit would be 2.
- Bounce Rate – The bounce rate shows the percentage of visitors who land on one of your pages, then leave the site immediately without viewing any other pages on the site.
- Average Time on Site – This is usually just what it says. If 100 visitors spent 2 minutes on your website, your Average Time on Site would be 2 minutes.
- Percent New Visits – The traffic stats can tell if a visitor has been to your website before. If your Percent New Visits is 95%, that means that very few of the people who have been on your website ever return.
These are the most common overall traffic statistics. See Part 2 for information about what to make of these stats. Other posts in the series will talk about more specific Visitor Stats, Traffic Source and Content information.
