For all online business? and web masters, it has become crucial to understand and analyze web traffic. Their survival might depend on this! With thousands of sites mushrooming everyday, it is a hard fight out there. The only way one can maintain an edge over others is through proper and expert analysis of where the customers come from, what they want and what the competitors are doing. So what really is web traffic analysis? It is the processing of statistical data to understand search engine ranking, the number of visitors and page popularity.



Web traffic is determined by search engine ranking. By this I mean the position of your site when a customer searches for the keywords. If it is in the top 10, you are likely to get a lot more visitors then if it is in the top 50. Customers usually do not dig down into results and only go up to top 20. So it is important that the site is positioned there. So do some research on search engine optimization and get your site to the top! Many software, services and courses exist to help you on your way.

Right then. Got your site in a good position? Now it is time to have a look at the traffic flowing in. This can be the most pleasurable moments as you watch visitors stream in. The data is often stored by web servers as raw log files. These can be analyzed by software that can range from free to very expensive ones.

Use software like Awe Stats to analyze data and form conclusions through comparison sheets and charts. Awe stats is an excellent software package freely available for web site owners. If you however do not have the technical knowledge to do this and your web host does not provide it, then there are many services who will do it for you for a monthly or yearly fee.

Transforming visitors into paying customers is an art by it self. By understanding the pages they visit and analyzing the most popular ones, a judgement can be made as to what the visitors require to become paying customers. Let us take an example.

You have a clothing store. However there is a fashion section on the site offering free tips. If you see that a lot of visitors prefer this section, then you can customize your clothing store to offer clothes in harmony to the tips.

Getting the numbers is not all! You need to interpret and make conclusions that will help you market your services or company's products.

As the Internet grows, Web traffic analysis increases in importance. Any one deciding to go online needs to understand this and make good use of statistical data to bring in visitors driving in cash and happiness.