Web Traffic: Frame-Worthy Stats

A little over two years ago, I was given my company’s website and told to “Fix it”…essentially meaning, 1. Make it visually interesting, 2. clean up that navigation, make it more relevant and user-friendly, and 3. increase web traffic. The first two tasks were the easy part…all new product photography, a clean design that reflected our new company branding, and all new copy written by me, of course. Not to mention adding convenient ways for the user to get more product info or to contact us directly, sign up for our e-newsletter, etc. The hard part is increasing web traffic….why?? Personally, I think it’s tough because you’re leaving the decision up to the customer to visit your website. And what incentivizes anyone to go to your website?? You have to cover ALL your bases, all your communications channels have to tell people to GO TO YOUR WEBSITE…and hope that all your efforts result in increased traffic.After all, increased web traffic correlates to increased product sales.

I like to refer to a company website as the silent sales person. It represents your company all day long, every day…waiting to answer someone’s questions, waiting to assist further, waiting to funnel their inquiries directly to the sales team back at corporate, and yes…waiting to make a sale.

When I began my mission to increase web traffic way back in 2009, stats were low….let’s just leave it that. As far as the actual website went, visually it was boring with insufficient data…so that was quickly fixed in order to launch some traffic initiatives. What were the results of my marketing efforts?? See below…

Increased HITS

Increased UNIQUE USERS

Frame-worthy stats….that’s what resulted 🙂 There are two things I care about when it comes to web traffic: HITS and UNIQUE USERS. A brief explanation, and please correct me if I’m wrong: 1. Unique Users: a single IP address visiting a website, i.e. your company. If 10 people from your company visited our website, it would only register as one unique user. 2. Hits: The web counts every single web page hit from those ten people.

The grand finale: unique users to our website are up 18% from LAST YEAR (2010). Note the green columns above…a pretty significant increase since April. A coincidence that I happened to launch some web-specific initiatives these last few months??? I don’t believe in coincidence 🙂 FYI, in 2010, unique users were up 8% from 2009, so do the math….pretty good if you ask me! You always have to continually work towards consistent improvement in everything you do. The initiatives I ran in 2010 were good, but not good enough. This year, stats were better than anticipated 🙂 The year isn’t over yet, so I guess I shouldn’t count my chickens, but I do feel we’re on track to blow last year’s web traffic numbers out of the water!!

Web hits are up 5% from last year (2010) which is good, but not great. I am happy with the results, however. An increase in unique users tells me I am reaching A LOT more people. As far as those new people clicking on multiple landing pages, those numbers are hovering close to the same as last year. But like I said, the year isn’t over!! And what kind of marketing professional would I be if I just accepted the slight increase in hits as sufficient??? Challenge accepted 🙂

Thoughts, opinions, etc. on increasing web traffic?? Don’t forget to post!! Would love to hear your story…

If you have a minute, check out my creative portfolio (always a work-in-progress) here!!