Friday, December 7, 2007

The Three Reasons Why You Need To Read Your Traffic Reports

If you' re not normally a computer person, the entire process of setting up a business website can be a terrifying process. Not only is coding difficult to understand, but it can take months or years to learn. With new site building services, you don't have to worry as much about how to put the pieces together; however, you still need to think about what happens once your site is up and running. How many people are stopping by to see your site is imperative for your success.

Your website needs to be an active part of your business. Think of your site as a virtual shop where visitors are the customers who come in to browse your selection. If you don't have a steady stream of people coming in, you won't have anyone staying to make a purchase. This is measured as traffic on your website. When you have a lot of traffic, you have a higher chance of getting more revenue. This makes sense, but how does reading about your traffic report help you?


Watching the Traffic Helps You Make Changes

If you've just made an adjustment to your website, the traffic report can tell the tale of whether your new site is a success or not. Because you will be keeping track of your traffic over the course of the time before you make changes, you can see what happens immediately after the changes take place. If you notice that the traffic counts sharply go up, this can be interpreted as a surge in curious visitors.

But when the surge doesn't stay up or it begins to fall very low, you might want to reconsider the changes you've just made. While not every drop in visitor traffic is a signal for you to make changes in your website, it is good to note when the count drops significantly. Try to keep a chart or a list of the traffic numbers that you can look over at the beginning and the end of each week. This will help you see trends in the website traffic as you change items on the site as well as for certain times of the year.

A Sharp Decrease in Traffic Might Signal a Server or Host Problem

When you're closely monitoring the traffic counts on your website, you will be able to tell when there is a significant problem with your site. If you suddenly notice that your site is showing no traffic or very small traffic numbers, you should become alarmed ' immediately. These are usually signs of a server or a hosting problem that you should know about before you see these low traffic counts, but sometimes you will not. By taking the time to look over your traffic counts regularly, you will notice this problem as soon as it happens. And then call your hosting company to see what is happening. Sometimes the servers will crash on occasion, but when you notice that it may have happened a few times in the past ' it might be a sign that you need a new hosting service.


Seeing Rises in Traffic Can Help You with Sales Plans

By keeping track of how many visitors go to your site on a weekly basis, you can begin to see when more visitors are on the site on most weeks. This can help you know when to put up sales and other discounts. You have two options in this situation. You can put the sales 'signs' up when more people are on the site or you can place these sales up on the site on days when traffic is slower in order to start to boost traffic on those days. Either way works, or you might want to create a schedule that switches back and forth between these two options.

An article from Scott Oliver



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