How to Read Your Website Traffic Report

by Aaron Howard, Senior Web Designer

Reading your website traffic reports may seem like a daunting experience.  However, if you understand what you are looking for, then you will be able to read your website traffic report, and interpret the information in a way that is useful to you.  Caresource provides website traffic reports to its website clients powered by Webtrends, a comprehensive web traffic software tool.

The first piece of information you should look for in your report is visitors. This information is on the Overview Dashboard on the Webtrends traffic report. Webtrends allows you to review the number of visitors on a specific date, a date range, or to compare dates or date ranges. This information will tell you if your marketing and communications efforts are having a positive effect on your website's traffic. A hit, on the other hand, is only relevant to server traffic, and is not an accurate measure of website traffic.

A website traffic report also provides information describing how long each visitor spent on your website. Webtrends provides a number on the Overview Dashboard called "Average Length of Visit." It is important to hold the website visitor's attention, an indication that you are attracting an audience relevant to your business and providing them with information that is relevant to their needs.

When deciding on your web communications strategy, it is important to understand what readers value on your website.  The traffic reports provided by Caresource contain this information under the "Visitors" tab, where you can choose to review the "Top Pages Viewed," or in more detail under the "Navigation" tab. 

The "Navigation" tab will give you information on how most people enter, exit, and navigate through your website. The page a visitor enters on tells you what page is best supporting traffic optimization, and where they take the time to visit indicates which pages are grabbing the readers' attention once they arrive.

For many businesses, there are online relationships, either free or paid for, that may promote website traffic. For example, if you are a member of an association that maintains an online member directory with a direct link to your website, one of the benefits of that relationship is their referral of consumers to your business, via the Internet. 

The tab called "Top Referring Sites" provides information detailing from which websites visitors came to your site. You can analyze this information, and discover which relationships are most beneficial to your website traffic. If you are paying for listing on an online directory, you can review this information to understand what kind of traffic return you are receiving from this investment.

Search engine optimization is an important part of your online strategy. Your website traffic report will provide you with details about which search engines visitors are using to find your website, and the keywords or phrases visitors are are using to do so. If you see that visitors are winding up at your website after using keywords or phrases that are not relevant to your business, you will need to adjust your website copy to better fit your business. This information is found under the "Search Engines" tab of the Webtrends traffic report.

Website traffic reports provide you with a wealth of information to support your online strategy. If you take the time to learn to understand this information, and review it regularly, you can use it to support the marketing and communications effort of your business. If Caresource is your website service provider, you can contact us at 800-448-5213 or drop us an email at service@caresource.com for assistance with your website traffic report.