How to use your Web site statistics

Many SMEs have a Web site designed without any thought to what else might be required to make the Web a powerful business tool.  An SME serious about making their Web site successful should use Web traffic-statistics to hone the site, so it becomes a useful sales/marketing tool.

These statistics give you the opportunity to monitor traffic coming to your Web site, and in turn allow you to analyse the "trails" visitors left behind, when they visited.

Internet Web servers systematically save these visitor trails in what are called "log files.”  These can be converted into readable statistics, through the use of Web traffic-analysis software, examples of which can be found in another Opportunity Wales article Understanding Web site statistics.

These statistics can then be used by the SME to track visitors’ navigation through the Web site.  

This document takes the use of Web site statistics further and explains what they mean and how they can be used.