Your Website's Traffic

I've been doing annual reports. Traffic is the starting point for all of them, and of course everyone is happy to hear about their increases in traffic. Me, too. My traffic is up 198.92% over the same time last year. But don't stop there. Ask yourself a few more questions:

• Is it business, or is it just traffic?

I have one client who had an increase of 370.95% in 2009, compared with 2008. But he only serves local clients, and his local traffic increased by a mere 44%. That extra traffic is fine -- there can even be side benefits, such as a general increase in web visibility and prestige that could increase conversions -- but his basic traffic info suggests a higher level of success than we're really seeing.

• Are you seeing the trends?

The client below had a nice percentage of increase between 2008 and 2009, but really it's better than that. 2008 was essentially flat, while 2009 shows an upward trend (ever since they hired me) that is likely to continue if we continue making good decisions. The reality here is better than the percentage of increase would suggest.



The client below has a fairly new site, and the percentage of increase isn't that impressive yet. But the line on the graph is heading upwards. We might want to speed the process up, but the general trend suggests that we're on the right path, and shouldn't make a complete change in strategy.

• Have you broken it down?

Here's my chart for traffic from search engines.


If I look at my traffic over the whole year, I have a fairly smooth and steady increase, like the ones earlier in the post. But breaking it down by source shows a different story. My direct traffic is relatively flat. Search traffic shows a temporary peak in May when I was mentioned in the Wall Street Journal, and then a nice increase between July and August that stayed high till the typical holiday drop --and even then was considerably higher than it was to begin with.

Here's a site, launched this summer, that shows completely different profiles for its three sources of traffic:





I haven't been working on this site since its launch, but if I were, I'd need to be aware of the different paths visitors were following.

When you look at your site's traffic for 2009 and make your online marketing plans for 2010, be sure to look closely enough at your traffic data to get the information you need for strategic decisionmaking.

Need more basic info about website traffic? Here are some posts you might find helpful:

Website Traffic
Learn from Your Traffic Sources
Detective Work at Analytics