Site Stats

Let the Good Times Roll–by Guy Kawasaki: Total BS (Blog Statistics)

I’m guessing that many other bloggers may have similar questions, so here is a dump of my blog statistics. To be sure, this is just one data point, and I haven’t exactly adhered to good research methodology…but for what it’s worth

I have only one question: Do you know ANY of this information about your site?

Site Stats can be addicting. You can spend hours pouring over the information, trying to figure out what it all means. Guy, even though he does not “know what it means”, pulls out most of the heavy hitters in Site Stats.

I am going to highlight two types of stats and pop the bubble on an often-quoted stat.

First: Unique Sessions or Unique Visits. Both of these refer to people that come to your site for the first time. Lots of sites now add a cookie or the server you are hosted on logs the address and that tells the stat counter that this person has visited the site. So, these are new people coming to your site for the first time. HOWEVER, I am on 4 computers any given day, so I count as 4 people. So, Unique Sessions or Unique Visits show you first time visitors.

Second: Repeat Sessions or Repeat Visitors. These are the people that have the cookie or have been logged and return to your site. This is your audience. Unique Sessions or Visits can happen for ANY number of reasons. Search results, referrals, or mistaken identity. Your repeats are the folks that WANT to be on your site. They have come back because they like what you have to say. If you have a REALLY high unique rate and a REALLY low repeat rate, you need to rethink what you are doing. That is a good indication that people do not like what they see, or you have some how got into a search that is popular. For instance, write a post or article about The Academy Awards and your site will start showing up in search results. Keep that in mind.

Finally: HITS. If you have a complicated page, each visit can call hundreds of hits. A hit is a succesful call to the server. A call to the server happens for EVERY ELEMENT in your page. Images, text, CSS, JavaScript, Database, the list goes on and on. So, ignore hits, except in one case, mentioned below. And when people brag about getting a million hits. Ask them about their repeat visitors.

Here is the time you do not ignore hits. If you have a lot of hits, know this. Each time that traffic goes back and forth to the server you are logging another tick in your bandwidth usage. If you have really complicated pages, with lots of images and flash, you will be eating up bandwidth. If you design a fast and lean page, you can actually lower your hits and lower your bandwidth bills.

So where do you get stats from? There are LOTS of places. The link below is a Google search for “Website Statistics”. And there are more on the way. Look through those results and see what suits your needs the best. Of course, if you have questions, let us know.

Website Statistics