creating a traffic report

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

  • Unique visitors over the period covered

  • Daily visitors

  • Daily pageviews or transactions

  • Average visit length (or time spent on your site measured in minutes or pageviews)

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 for

When 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.

what to look for

As you familiarize yourself with your site's traffic, important patterns will emerge.

traffic patterns

  • How many people visit your site?

  • How do people find your site?

  • Where do people enter your site? Through the front door, or an interior page?

  • What parts of your site are most popular?

  • How long do visitors stay on your site?

  • How often if ever do visitors return to your site?

  • Where do people exit your site?

traffic spikes and dips

  • When do traffic levels usually rise or fall? Which months are busiest? Which days?

  • When do you see sudden spikes in traffic? After sending an email? Right before the weekend?

purchase patterns

  • How many visitors make a purchase?

  • What's the cost of the average purchase?

  • How many items are purchased at once?

clickthrough patterns

  • Do users click on a certain part of the page?

  • Do users click on certain words or pictures?

registration patterns

  • If users register for your site or your newsletter when do they sign up? Where?

  • Are there certain features that inspire registration?

searching or browsing patterns

  • What percent of visitors use your search engine?

  • What do they search for?

  • If they don't search, how do they navigate the site?


action section: a sample traffic report

Traffic reports are as unique as the sites they monitor. The structure of your report will mimic the structure of your site. And the metrics you track will depend on what matters most to your site and your business. Below is a sample report to get you started.

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Metrics you may want to include

  • Unique visitors

  • Daily visitors

  • Daily pageviews

  • Pageviews per visitor

  • Session length

  • Section-by-section breakdown of pageviews

  • Most visited pages

  • Top entry pages

  • Top exit pages

  • Number of registered users

  • Number of subscribers

  • Number of paying customers

  • Number of items purchased per order

  • Average cost per order

  • Most popular search terms

  • Most common error messages

  • Busiest days and times


investigating changes

When 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 you launch a new feature or ad campaign?

  • Did a single article or headline prove popular?

  • Were users searching on a particular keyword?

  • Did your servers go down?

Did something happen in the world?

  • Was there a major news event?

  • Was it a national or school holiday?

Did something happen on the web?

  • Did an ISP, like Earthlink, have a blackout?

  • Did a major site link to you?

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.

what makes traffic spike?

Sudden spikes and slumps in traffic can be mystifying, but there's usually an explanation.

traffic spikes occur when

  • A new feature or section is introduced.

  • A new promotion scheme ad campaign, link campaign, etc. goes into effect.

  • An effective email update is sent to users

  • The site is promoted in a newsletter, mailing list, news story, or elsewhere on the web.

  • A great sale, compelling story or sexy headline pulls readers in.

  • A major news event drives people online. This effect isn't limited to portals and news sites; all sites may get a lift.

  • A news event or TV show drives interest in a topic related to your site.

  • A portal, news site, or "site-of-the-day" feature spotlights your site.

  • You add the words: "Free," "New," "More" or "Sex" to your front door.

  • Seasonal fluctuations kick in, especially in January and September.

traffic slumps occur when

  • One or more of your servers goes down.

  • You experience a bandwidth black-out.

  • A major ISP experiences a service outage, keeping many subscribers off-line.

  • A national holiday keeps people away from work, and therefore off the Internet.

  • A school holiday keeps students out of school, and therefore off the Internet.

  • Seasonal fluctuations kick in, such as the summer slump.

  • It's the weekend.

  • An application or ad on your site is crashing users' computers.




The Unusually Useful Web Book
The Unusually Useful Web Book
ISBN: 0735712069
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2006
Pages: 195
Authors: June Cohen

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