GoFuckYourself.com - Adult Webmaster Forum - View Single Post - The most important info for your business, or stats 101

raymor · 05-11-2005, 10:42 AM

I just wrote a rant about stats in an email to someone and that reminded
me that jthere are a lot of webmasters who never learned or have forgotten
the importance of basic web server stats, so I'm reposting it here in the hopes
that it is helpful to someone.

Those stats should also tell you how many hits you got
to the front page, how many to any preview or sample pages,
and how many to the join page. That information is perhaps
the most important information there is for your business, in my
opinion. The web business is all about getting traffic to your
site, getting them interested via the sample or tour pages,
then getting them to head to the join page to buy. Therefore
if you haven't looked at your stats before you'll want to really
take a good look at where your traffic is coming from and
how you can get more traffic from those sources, where you are
failing to get traffic from (like if you aren't getting any
hits from Google you know you have some work to do), and
then what those vistors to your site do once they get there.
Are your sample pages getting almost as many hits as your
front page, or are people seeing only the front page and
leaving without even seeing your sales pitch? If so, why?
Perhaps your front page only works in some browser MS
put out 4 years ago called IE6, so you are losing 25% of
your potential customers just because your page won't work
with a modern browser? Perhaps it requires proprietary
software such as Flash? Then is the join page getting
almost as many hits as any one of the sample / tour pages?
If not, why not? Are people leaving your site when the
sample page is only halfway done loading because the page
is a half a MB, taking 100 seconds to load for the majority
of potential customers, who are still using dial up?

05-11-2005, 10:42 AM
raymor Confirmed User Join Date: Oct 2002 Posts: 3,745	The most important info for your business, or stats 101 I just wrote a rant about stats in an email to someone and that reminded me that jthere are a lot of webmasters who never learned or have forgotten the importance of basic web server stats, so I'm reposting it here in the hopes that it is helpful to someone. Those stats should also tell you how many hits you got to the front page, how many to any preview or sample pages, and how many to the join page. That information is perhaps the most important information there is for your business, in my opinion. The web business is all about getting traffic to your site, getting them interested via the sample or tour pages, then getting them to head to the join page to buy. Therefore if you haven't looked at your stats before you'll want to really take a good look at where your traffic is coming from and how you can get more traffic from those sources, where you are failing to get traffic from (like if you aren't getting any hits from Google you know you have some work to do), and then what those vistors to your site do once they get there. Are your sample pages getting almost as many hits as your front page, or are people seeing only the front page and leaving without even seeing your sales pitch? If so, why? Perhaps your front page only works in some browser MS put out 4 years ago called IE6, so you are losing 25% of your potential customers just because your page won't work with a modern browser? Perhaps it requires proprietary software such as Flash? Then is the join page getting almost as many hits as any one of the sample / tour pages? If not, why not? Are people leaving your site when the sample page is only halfway done loading because the page is a half a MB, taking 100 seconds to load for the majority of potential customers, who are still using dial up? __________________ For historical display only. This information is not current: support@bettercgi.com ICQ 7208627 Strongbox - The next generation in site security Throttlebox - The next generation in bandwidth control Clonebox - Backup and disaster recovery on steroids