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Website Activity Reports: The Latest Trend!
April, 2000

"How many hits does your website get?"

How do you answer that question? First of all, "hits" is a meaningless, inflated statistic that measures the total number of files, including pictures and logos, downloaded from your website. A more critical measurement is the number of "visitors" or "visitor sessions" your website entertained.

Measuring and tracking visitor sessions is one of many important functions of website activity reports that your website host or marketing specialist can provide. Monthly or quarterly reports, delivered in print or on a private web page, can reveal important trends such as:

• A sudden increase in inquiries or orders coming from the site. Is there another site that is now referring a lot of visitors to my site?
   

• Unqualified or inappropriate inquiries coming from the site. Is my site attracting search engine visitors barking up the wrong tree?
   

• Complaints about technical problems on the site. Does my site have a bad link or program error, and how many site visitors have seen an error message?

All website activity, including pages viewed, files downloaded, time and date of visit, and even the visitor's referral source--other sites or search engines--is recorded by the website in activity log files. Special analysis software can read these log files and produce meaningful reports that show:

• Number of visitor sessions

• Number of total pages viewed

• Average session length of time

• Number of forms submitted or other interactive features

• Most popular entry and exit pages of site

• Passwords used to enter private pages

• Country of origin of visitors

• Number of visitors by date, day of the week, and hour of the day

• Page and form errors

• Most popular referring sites, including search engines

• Search phrases and keywords most often used by site visitors from search engines

When tracked monthly or quarterly, website activity reports can show important trends in source of site visitors and activity on the site. In response, you can change your website to better reflect the interests of visitors, or adjust how your site attracts search engine visitors to better target prospects.

To see a sample report showing website activity on DynamicsOnline.com in March, go to:

http://www.dynamicsonline.com/activity

Can website activity reports identify site visitors? No, not entirely. Reports can identify visitors by their IP address, a setting that identifies how each visitor connected to the Internet. Most often, the IP address indicates visitors from AOL, WebTV, or other Internet access services. Some visitors' IP addresses indicate the company they work for, such as Xerox.com. The best way to capture the identity of website visitors is to ask them for name, address, phone number, or e-mail address using contact forms, trivia contests, giveaways, or the Send to a Friend feature discussed in a previous tip.

Contact Dynamics Online about receiving regular website activity reports. We can produce them for most websites, even sites hosted by other parties.