An interesting and important piece of research caught my eye today. Not that I was totally unaware of this, but today was the first time in a long time that I had the ‘leisure’ to really investigate. Having carried out my research, albeit a quick one, and after collecting website statistics from various sources, I would like to present my findings.
But first, if you are like many, you can often rely on “external sources” to track the efficiency and effectiveness of your web page performance. By putting more value into other people’s programs and tracking, people often get discouraged because their website advertising and/or Internet marketing isn’t “paying off.” They tend to believe that the big name behind a show must mean they’re right and you’re wrong. That his follow-up is better and more accurate than his own.
As strange as it may seem, the truth is often not the whole truth and nothing more than that. Take a quick look at several areas online that I use for one of my own domains. Frankly, I use most of them for fun, and I mean fun, because you’re about to find out just how “out of place” those ‘tried and true’ fonts can be:
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11/14/2007 at 12:49 PM
An analysis program – 2 visitors
An SEO program – 51 visitors
A keyword tracking program – 45 visitors
In comparison with:
Domain Cpanel Stats – 384 (and the day is only half the day)
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All of these programs/services are designed to provide the website owner with additional information about their traffic and more.
So which one are you most likely to believe? You’re right, that’s an obvious question. One’s cpanel statistics are the most reliable, and frankly the only, source of information about one’s website. Third-party systems help provide different perspectives on your web advertising and Internet marketing, but they obviously have limited capabilities. Only the cpanel of your own domain (or whatever yours is called) has a real idea of the performance of your website.
Learn to read the information on your own website. It is there to ask, take, read and analyze. Then take the information you collect and use it to your best advantage. Find out where your visitors are coming from and which page they tend to land on. Find out how many of those visitors stay on your website or find out where they are slipping away. Plug the holes and keep them on your website by reproducing the best features of your website. Reorganize your presentation: remove “bad pages” if necessary. Highlight what others are really coming to your website to find and give them a reason to stay.
Stop blindly trusting “the other guy.” Your own domain statistics are your only reliable method of analyzing and growing your website’s online presence. Make your website advertising and internet marketing even more effective by finding out what brings visitors to your site or what drives them away.
And, here’s another valid reason why doing business online really means taking responsibility for creating your own virtual real estate; Without your own control panel, you may just be second-guessing yourself and wasting time and money.
How will you know how well, or poorly, your website is performing if your tracking isn’t up to par?
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