Each time we design or make a site the first thing is, that i implement a statistics counter in it. The reason for that is, you really need to know, where do users come from, how long they stay, what screen resolution they use, how many uniques and hits you have daily and even what percent of viewers comes back to your website. Now there are a lot of counters softwares. But as for counters are in question which one is the best one.

Now analyzing these stats can be a powerful way to increase your visitors, or make better conversion ratios if you’re selling products. You can set up goals too. For example, if you have a product review site or a product you want to push more than others, you can set up a “goal” and se what percentage of people go to that site and how. The best part is, you can see that % with numbers. Then when you change stuff or promotional text that links to that product, you can see and increase or drop. This way, you know what works and what doesn’t. this way you can increase your profits and maybe exposure. It all depends on the kind of site you have.

Now this graphs is important for couple of things. It tells you if you have any visitors of not. Also, if your traffic is growing or not. The difference between unique hits and page views is also important. It tells you, on average how many pages the visitor checked after going to another site or closing the browser. For example if you have let’s say 90 unique visitors daily and 400 page views, it means that averagely 1 visitor clicked and maybe even read 4 blog posts. If this number is higher than you have a really interesting blog if it’s low… you’ll need to really work on it.

Also in the world of advertising or selling banner ad space these stats are extremely important. We can compare it with a media like a newspaper. The price of the ad they sell is determined with various factors, but the most important one is “views” as in how many people will view this ad.
Now this statistic is really important for all of the websites. It tells you, what screen resolution people who visit your websites use. In couple of years, these results will change since there will be better lcd monitors and displays developed. But you need to design your website for today! Not for tomorrow. You need to know what your customers system is.

The important thing to view, is the lowest screen resolution 800×600 pixels which has almost 11%. That means, that there are 11% of people that still use this small resolution. Now the resolution 1024×768 has about 52%. Now this means that this resolution will be standardized in some time. Now what i mean by that is, almost all the size will have the width fitted to that resolution. couple of years ago, the 800×600 resolution was, and still is kinda, the standard size for websites. This is highly different from site to site. You need to look at your own statistics.

Now why is this stat so important? If you make a website that is 1000 pixels wide than 10% of the viewers with the 800×600 resolution won’t see it the way they should, which means you will lose those people. When this percentage will be lover or maybe gone, only then it will be really worth to build pages with 1000px width. And as i said this will rise in the future.
Another good statistic is the returning visitors one. This one also tells you if you’re doing working on your site good or not. A big percentage means you have quality content and they will come back, a lover one means you need to work harder and also smarter.

Submitted on Sunday, June 20th, 2010 at 4:55 am