NoteWay Notes Newsletter #21
Welcome to our next edition of NoteWay Notes, the official newsletter from NoteWay Media. This newsletter is a special edition that focuses on using the Website Traffic Reports that come with your NoteWay website.
Read below to find out the details, and stay tuned for more new features in future newsletters.
The NoteWay Team
www.noteway.com
Understanding Your Website Traffic Reports
When you convert your website to the full version, your control panel includes an option at the bottom for Website Traffic Reports. Below are some tips for viewing these reports and understanding how visitors are using your website.
There are really three main questions that these reports can help you answer: how many people are visiting your website, where are they coming from, and which pages are the most popular? The following sections answer each of these questions in more detail.
How many people are visiting your website?
To determine how many people are visiting your website, you should first keep in mind the difference between "hits" and "visits". The "visits" number tells how many times a particular page on your website has been viewed (or "visited") by various people. For example, if the "visits" number on your home page was 50 last month, then the home page of your website was visited 50 times.
By comparison, your website traffic report also includes a number for "hits" on each page. This number is a little more confusing since it deals with the number of times a person’s web browser connects to a particular page on your site. For example, if your home page includes a banner, text, photo, and background image, then there are 4 separate items that must be downloaded before someone can view your home page. This means that a person’s web browser must connect 4 times (or "hit" your website 4 times) during a single visit when displaying your home page.
Since the hits numbers are usually much higher than the visits numbers, NoteWay recommends that you focus on the visits and ignore the hits. This will give you the most accurate summary of your true website traffic. By using the Summary section in the upper left corner of your traffic report, you can see the total number of visitors broken down by day, week, and month.
Where are visitors coming from?
This information is available in the Recent Referrers section of your traffic report, which is the box in the upper right corner. It tells which websites (domains) have recently sent visitors to your site, including search engines like Google and Yahoo. Related to this is the Recent Search Strings section which tells you which terms visitors are entering into search engines to find you.
In the bottom center of your traffic report, there is also a separate section for New Referring Domains. This tells which websites (domains) have recently started sending traffic your way and the number of hits for each. This is especially useful if there are any sites in particular that you are hoping will send over visitors.
Which pages are the most popular?
Before seeing which pages are the most popular on your website, you must first pick a timeframe from the Summary section the upper left corner. For example, clicking on the "Last Month" option will give you different results than clicking on the "Yesterday" option.
Once you select a timeframe, the Resources section on the left shows which pages were the most popular during that timeframe. As we mentioned above, you’ll want to focus on the number of visits rather than hits for each page listed.
The pages shown in the Resource section are listed according to their popularity, with the most frequently viewed page appearing first. Usually the home page has the highest number of visits, since most people start there before exploring the rest of your website. By seeing which pages are the most popular, you’ll get a better idea of which pages visitors are selecting once they enter your website.