Support
Tips and articles

Customer statistics

UNLOCK THE CUSTOMER INFORMATION IN YOUR WEBSITE

Most businesses dramatically under-use the information their website can give them about their customers. One of the biggest advantages of a website compared to traditional alternatives such as brochures and shopfronts is the information that is gained from ALL visitors. A shopfront gives excellent feedback from those customers happy to talk to your salespeople, but it doesn’t tell you how many potential customers took a quick look and moved on, nor does it tell you which goods they looked at or how they found you.

A simple example will illustrate the power of website visitor statistics in determining the impact of promotional activity. A client of ours cut a seemingly attractive deal for a major web portal to direct visitors to our client’s website. In the following weeks the number of site visitors increased dramatically. But a simple analysis of the site visitor statistics showed that only a very small number of visitors had been referred by the portal. Further analysis showed the increase in visitors was due to other marketing efforts and our client was able to re-assess the value and focus of the promotion.

The example shows the power of one of the most useful pieces of site visitor information – where your customers are arriving to your site from. Had they book-marked your site, or did they arrive from a search engine – if so, which one? Knowing where your customers come from helps you to understand what they are interested in, and therefore to ensure that you are providing the information they seek. A common characteristic of the most successful websites is that they constantly tune their content to match the needs of their site visitors.

It is well-known that turning advertising into sales usually needs repeat exposure – the more novel or expensive the product the more exposures needed. Again, an understanding of your site visitor statistics can help. Knowing which pages customers view most and how they move through your site will help you to create content that retains their interest longer.

One of the biggest challenges on the internet is gaining repeat visitors and careful analysis of visitor statistics will highlight ways to achieve this. One example is the time of day graph shown below. This site attracts a high proportion of repeat visitors by providing frequent news updates on its subject theme. The website owner has capitalised on visitor preferences by providing news updates before 8:00am so that the majority of visitors gain the most up to date information. The peak time appears to correspond to customers logging on when they arrive at work – does this suggest some opportunities to you?

Also apparent in the graph is that this site has a very good ratio of around 8 pages viewed per session. Further analysis shows that this ratio changes substantially, regularly peaking on particular days of the week. The website owner exploits this by timing the launch of special offers and other promotions to the times when the customers spend the longest logged on.

Most good website developers and ISPs provide comprehensive and easy to use web-based reports. These should include visitor and page view statistics, session duration, referring sites, and e-commerce tracking. If your current service is unsatisfactory, an alternative to changing website provider is a third-party statistics package such as www.SiteStats.com. A relatively small modification to your website enables them to provide statistics for around $US25 per month for low traffic sites.