Analyzing Website Traffic

From Analyzing Website Traffic by Eric Holter

By Eric Holter

This month's newsletter about analyzing website traffic is an update to a previous newsletter we wrote way back in April of 2001. This updated newsletter goes into more detail about how to use, read, and analyze the information contained in an Urchin report. We've also provided some general benchmarks for evaluating the information contained in a site's Urchin report.

What is Website traffic analysis software?

Website traffic reports are generated from the log files that are kept by a web server. These logs contain records of every request for pages, graphics and files on the server. The records include the IP address of the requesting computer (not the actual identity of the visitor), the time and date of the request, what kind of browser requested the file, Date Range what kind of computer was being used, and whether or not the request was successfully fulfilled. The raw log file is a running list of technical information and it's not very helpful to look at. That's where software like Urchin comes in. Urchin reads these log files and then presents the information in ways that are much more comprehensible and helpful to site owners.

We have set up Urchin to compile and generate our traffic reports on a nightly basis. One of Urchin's nice features is that it allows you to set and view your traffic information by whatever date range you set. Urchin's interface is very easy to use. Simply click on the "enter range" link below the calendar display and a window pops up where you can visually select the start and end date for the range you are interested in analyzing. The report adjusts its numbers on the fly when you click "Apply Date Range."

Sessions Screen There are six groups of reports available in the Urchin system: Traffic, Pages & Files, Navigation, Referrals, Domains & Users, and Browsers & Robots. The "Traffic" group is the default group when you first open up Urchin. It contains four different ways of reporting traffic. It reports site activity by session, pageviews, hits, bytes, and then gives a summary view of all four. The default screen upon log-in is perhaps the most useful bit of information; it describes the number of site sessions or unique visits.

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Generating Traffic | December 29, 2008 11:42 PM

I don't know if you are interested, but I was able to generate approximately 1200 visitors in a given month. I wrote a small article about the steps I took to do it. I did it all for free. Anyway here is my link. http://www.backyardengineer.com/web_traffic.html
I hope that is usefull.

Kevin

p.s. please feel free to check out the other pages on my site. I have put some time into it. Thanks

ramesh | December 30, 2008 11:27 PM

traffic

ktrout | April 14, 2009 2:33 PM

how come referrals are calculated by "sessions"? if a session is a unique visitor to our site, how come the referral sessions are higher, than my unique visitors?

syed | April 18, 2009 10:18 PM

We are developing our website, we have just started it. We don't know where these visitors are coming from, almost 300 hundred every month and increasing.Is this normal?, we have not started advertising our website yet.

Annete | May 2, 2009 12:39 PM

Who can help me to find what is the average conversion rate download/buy? I am receptive to any suggestions!
10xs

lee pearl | May 7, 2009 12:01 PM

Great article.

They say that conversion rates are about 200/1. i.e if you get 600 hits per day then you should get 3 sales/downloads.

Sci-Fi-Si | February 11, 2010 7:52 PM

An interesting article, but....4:53 - That's a really long time - especially as an average.13.5 Page views as an average really is extreamily high, I don't think I have ever clicked on that many links on any website I have ever visited (except maybe MySpace / Facebook).I'm not suggesting that these figures of yours are pure fantasy but they're so mind bogglingly high I find it a bit hard to accept. I would say my average number of clicks on a site is between 0-3, which either makes me an extreamily unique surfer or the sites you're developing are of such complexity, depth and involvement that I must be missing something.Facebook - Now that site I could easily believe has an average of 10-50 clicks per visit, but anything other than a social networking, dating or otherwise members-only site just couldn't require that number of clicks.If any site does require 13 clicks (on average) - especially if it's an information site it's a very bad thing. Any site that requires 13 clicks if it's an e-commerse site is also extreamily bad.'More' is not always better and in some cases 'more' is an extreamily bad thing.Number of visitors - not 'hits' is what counts. 'Hits' are simply the number of files being served by your server, this means html pages, jpg's, gif's, png's banners you name it anything your server sends is a 'hit' and the more it has to send for each visitor the worse it is. Everytime Googlebot visits it's a hit - etc...I publish a site with 1,500 visitors pcm without any advertising other than organic search engines, but the average page views are closer to 2 and the length of stay is normally about 2 mins.I only mention this because novice publishers/developers are often lead to believe that being #1 in Google for a search phrase means they'll be making millions - this is not so. I hate to burst the bubble, but so many people are being mislead that I needed to say something on this.Maybe I should build a members only site...?All the best.

Kelly Daugherty | February 26, 2010 5:45 PM

I get on average 10,000 hits a month. Is this a good amount of hits?

http://www.kellydaughertyphotography.com