How Are Visitors Finding Your Website?
| Category: Traffic and Tracking | Date: 2003-06-19 |
Web traffic reports provide valuable information about your Website. Learn how to use your Referral Report as a marketing tool.
WHAT IS A REFERRAL?
A Referral is a page on someone elses Website containing a link to your Website.You dont see this when you browse the Web, but every time you click a link your browser tells the Web server; "I just came from page A and Ive been referred to page B on your site." The Web server notes this in its "log," and software analyzes the log to find out which pages users are looking at and how they got there.
WHY ARE REFERRALS IMPORTANT TO ONLINE MARKETING?
Traditional marketers employ a variety of techniques to learn how their customers found them. They ask the customers directly ("How did you hear about us?") or they build tracking into their promotions using devices such as coupon codes. They do this to find out which marketing efforts are actually working and which arent. You can do the same thing with Referral reports.
HOW DO I USE THE REFERRALS REPORT?
The Referrals Report shows you a list of referring Websites, and the number of visitors who came from each. They generally fall into three categories:
1. No Referral
A user already knows your Website address (from your business card, a bookmark, etc.) he or she can go directly to your site without being referred by another page. How is this statistic useful? Lets say you sent out a mailer with your Website address on it, hoping to drive traffic to your site.
If you look at the number of No Referral visitors for the weeks following the mailing the increase will give you an idea of how many people responded. (Of course, there are more accurate ways to measure reponse but this will give you a ballpark figure.)
2. Search Engines
Entries like "yahoo.com" or "google.com" show the number of people who found your site through a search engine. You can use this information in several ways. Suppose youre using one of the search engines "pay for placement" services. You can use the referral report to determine if youre getting your moneys worth.
Or suppose you notice that youre getting lots of referrals from a particular search engine. You may want to submit more of your sites pages to that engine, since it seems to be working well. Or if youre getting very few referrals you should double-check your registration, and investigate why people arent finding you.
Ideally, you should make a "closed loop" out of the process of trying new search engine registrations, and checking your Referrals to see how they are working.
3. Other Sites
Search engines arent the only ways Web users can find you, and depending on your business, they may not even be the most important. There are many other types of sites that can be good sources of referrals.
Lets say youre a Fencing master, and the Fencing Society has a Website with a directory of local teachers. Youre listed on their Website, and your Referral report shows that a lot of people have found you there. This suggests that you should not only make sure that your listing is maintained, but you might want to increase its prominence. You could advertise a discount to Fencing Society members or offer to sponsor their email newsletter.
About the Author
Jim Grady is the author of "REDiTIPS eMarketing Newsletter" and a partner in Resolve Digital, Web Design, Marketing and Content Management.
jim@resolvedigital.com
http://www.resolvedigital.com
WHAT IS A REFERRAL?
A Referral is a page on someone elses Website containing a link to your Website.You dont see this when you browse the Web, but every time you click a link your browser tells the Web server; "I just came from page A and Ive been referred to page B on your site." The Web server notes this in its "log," and software analyzes the log to find out which pages users are looking at and how they got there.
WHY ARE REFERRALS IMPORTANT TO ONLINE MARKETING?
Traditional marketers employ a variety of techniques to learn how their customers found them. They ask the customers directly ("How did you hear about us?") or they build tracking into their promotions using devices such as coupon codes. They do this to find out which marketing efforts are actually working and which arent. You can do the same thing with Referral reports.
HOW DO I USE THE REFERRALS REPORT?
The Referrals Report shows you a list of referring Websites, and the number of visitors who came from each. They generally fall into three categories:
1. No Referral
A user already knows your Website address (from your business card, a bookmark, etc.) he or she can go directly to your site without being referred by another page. How is this statistic useful? Lets say you sent out a mailer with your Website address on it, hoping to drive traffic to your site.
If you look at the number of No Referral visitors for the weeks following the mailing the increase will give you an idea of how many people responded. (Of course, there are more accurate ways to measure reponse but this will give you a ballpark figure.)
2. Search Engines
Entries like "yahoo.com" or "google.com" show the number of people who found your site through a search engine. You can use this information in several ways. Suppose youre using one of the search engines "pay for placement" services. You can use the referral report to determine if youre getting your moneys worth.
Or suppose you notice that youre getting lots of referrals from a particular search engine. You may want to submit more of your sites pages to that engine, since it seems to be working well. Or if youre getting very few referrals you should double-check your registration, and investigate why people arent finding you.
Ideally, you should make a "closed loop" out of the process of trying new search engine registrations, and checking your Referrals to see how they are working.
3. Other Sites
Search engines arent the only ways Web users can find you, and depending on your business, they may not even be the most important. There are many other types of sites that can be good sources of referrals.
Lets say youre a Fencing master, and the Fencing Society has a Website with a directory of local teachers. Youre listed on their Website, and your Referral report shows that a lot of people have found you there. This suggests that you should not only make sure that your listing is maintained, but you might want to increase its prominence. You could advertise a discount to Fencing Society members or offer to sponsor their email newsletter.
About the Author
Jim Grady is the author of "REDiTIPS eMarketing Newsletter" and a partner in Resolve Digital, Web Design, Marketing and Content Management.
jim@resolvedigital.com
http://www.resolvedigital.com
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