Understanding SiteStats Live!

 While a hit counter may tell you how many people come to your website, SiteStats Live! can tell you where they came from, how they found your site, and how much their visit cost you.  Like all valuable information, it must first be interpreted and understood before it can be used effectively.  The SiteStats Live! reports offer exhaustive details about your visitors, but it is up to you to take advantage of what they has to offer.

Several areas of SiteStats Live! refer to something called "click value".  This concept can help you maximize the profitability of your website.  There are two ways that click value is used: positive cash flow and negative cash flow.  When examining the positive cash flow generated through click value, you divide the revenue your website generates by the number of hits your site receives each month.  For example, if you had $10,000 profit each month from your website, and you receive 1000 visitors in a month, $10,000 ÷ 1000 visitors = $10.00 per visitor.  Theoretically then, each visitor you get to your website generates $10.00 for you.  Calculating and understanding negative cash flow is a little more complex, and has to do with banner ads and CPM, or clicks-per-mil.  CPM is used to represent 1000 page views of a particular banner.  So, if you would like to have your banner viewed 100,000 times--that would be 100 CPM (100,000 ÷ 1000).  Let us assume that you are paying $50.00 per CPM.  The total cost of the banner would be $5,000 ($50 x 100 CPM).  Once all of your CPMs have been 'used up', you will know how many of those one hundred thousand people who saw your banner actually visited your site.  If you divide the cost of your banner by the number of visitors, you can determine how much each of those visitors cost you.  If you had 10,000 visitors click on your banner, then each of those visitors would have cost you $0.50 ($5,000 ÷ $10,000).  You can compare the positive cash flow number and the negative cash flow number to see how everything fits together.  If each visitor to your site produces $10 for you, but costs $0.50, then your actual revenue from the website is only $9,500.  In comparison, getting listed on most search engines is free, and the listings usually generate more traffic than a banner.

            Click value is a powerful tool when you combine it with keyword statistics.  In the Search Engine Keyword Report, SiteStats Live! offers a comprehensive list of which keywords web surfers use to find your site.  You can assign a click value to each of those visitors, and quickly figure out which keywords work best and how much money the search engines are sending to you.  You should examine the keywords bringing you the most traffic.  You might consider focusing your pages more on these keywords.  There might even be keywords people use that you thought had nothing to do with your site.  If you find that many people are using these keywords to find you, consider adding those keywords to your next doorway page, or giving them more importance on your page if they already exist.   You may also find that several keywords which bring traffic to your site are often misspelled.  It may sound strange, but adding these misspelled keywords to your page may increase your position for those web surfers who misspell them.

            The Page View Summary Report is a general overview of the number of visitors to your site since your SiteStats Live! account has been active.  It is far more useful however than a simple hit counter.  It can tell you how many people have been to your site in the last day, week, month, year and so on.  It can even tell you which day has seen the most traffic.  The Page View Summary also calculates averages like the average number of visitors per day.  If you are running any kind of advertising campaign for your website and would like to gauge the effectiveness of it, this is easy to do using this data.  By combining this data with click value data you can see how much activity is happening at any given time in terms of revenue.  You can also see if that banner ad or mass mailing you bought is actually generating any traffic.

            The Top Referrer Visits Report displays a run-down of the websites that your visitors were visiting just before they clicked to your site.  In the report, you can click on any of the domain names to view a detailed report on each visitor referred from that URL.  By examining the domains that these visitors are coming from, you can determine the interests of your visitors, and to a lesser degree, what their chain of thought might have been that brought them to you.  You may find that a competitor's site was the referrer, or that you are getting many refers from a particular geographic location, such as Germany.  You can use this information to help you decide on how to target your advertising efforts.  Perhaps you were unaware that German web surfers were so interested in your products.  You could then further explore possibilities in the German market.  You might also discover that one website in particular is sending you much more traffic than any others.  You can use this opportunity, and contact those webmasters and create web alliances, trade links, or banners.  SiteStats Live! provides in-depth information to who, how, when, where from, and why people visit your site.  You can use it all to determine how you need to tune your websites for your audience.

The data that SiteStats Live! presents is unlimited in its application.  The above represents just a few of the many useful ways that you can use SiteStats Live! to increase your traffic and revenue.  The possibilities are only limited by your imagination and dedication. 

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 This article has been adapted from  AddWeb Article- Copyright (c) 2000  Cyberspace Headquarters, LLC. www.cyberspacehq.com