The traffic report may be the single most important document for monitoring the health of your site. Your success is dependent on your users, and traffic reports give you a brutally honest picture of how users are behaving on a day-to-day basis. Whether delivered daily, weekly, or monthly, traffic reports keep you up to date on the metrics that matter most to your site. The metrics you watch will depend both on your site's focus (what's fascinating to one site producer will be meaningless to another) and the limitations of the system you're using. Every traffic report should include
Traffic reports are most useful when combined with relevant financial reports, such as ad revenue, product sales, paid subscriptions, or other successful transactions. Taken together, traffic and revenue data deliver a complete picture of site performance. what to look forWhen analyzing traffic reports, the first thing you should look for is big disparities: Is one section of your site more popular than others? Is your site busier on certain days than others? By getting a feel for these disparities and watching numbers fluctuate week-to-week, you develop an understanding of how your users behave, and quite possibly what they want. You should always keep an eye out for big, dramatic changes, like a sudden surge or drop in pageviews. And when you notice a change even if it's only a one-day blip you should immediately investigate, and keep notes on what you learn. But to recognize these big shifts, and more importantly to understand what they mean, you must have a baseline familiarity with your site's traffic patterns. Toward this end, I recommend looking at your numbers daily and compiling weekly and monthly traffic reports to discuss at staff meetings. This way, the entire team becomes aware of your site's traffic trends.
investigating changesWhen something significant affects your traffic causing it to either spike or dip dramatically it's important to get to the bottom of it as quickly as possible (preferably within a few days). The longer you wait, the less people remember, and the more of a mystery your traffic reports become. To investigate a fluctuation in traffic, ask Did something happen on your site?
Did something happen in the world?
Did something happen on the web?
As you investigate a change in traffic, it's a good idea to ask coworkers perhaps in the staff meeting for help. You may not get to the source of all your traffic fluctuations, but by recording events when they happen, you'll be in a much better position to analyze cause and effect. Hopefully, you'll uncover enough clues to form a theory on the source of the traffic change. And with any luck, you'll be able to learn something from it. For instance, if you lost traffic due to a server crash or service blackout, try to develop systems or purchase equipment that prevents it from happening again. If your traffic spiked because of a new initiative an ad campaign, an article, a site feature try to repeat the success. And if the traffic fluctuation was completely out of your control caused by a holiday or news story or another remote event well, just chalk it up to experience. Next time, you'll be ready.
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