When you're designing your ecommerce website, you should include be a means of tracking website visitor statistics. The process might be simple, and your ecommerce web hosting provider may include this as part of the service. If not there are solutions like StatCounter and Google Analytics that you can use.
 Tools like Stat Counter can give you detailed information about where your visitors are coming from and where they are entering and exiting your site.
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However, simply tracking the data isn't sufficient -- you need to analyze it and use it to understand how visitors come to your site, what they do once they arrive and to identify areas of the site that need work. If you're not tracking and analyzing your website visitors then you're operating blind -- you could be hemorrhaging visitors and you won't even know or be able to stop the flow.
In this article, I'll explain what information you should track, and how you can use the information to fine-tune your website design.
Is Your Site Even There?
If people can’t access your site when they try to visit, you're losing visitors before you've had a chance to sell to them. Your site's statistics will tell you if visitors encounter a 404 Page Not Found error message. This occurs when a visitor tries to load a page that doesn't exist. It might be an incorrect link from another site or a broken link on your site.
While you can create a custom 404 page to capture visitors who encounter this error and redirect them elsewhere, it's much better if the error doesn't occur in the first place. However, you won't know if you have this problem -- or what's causing it -- if you don't check for it.
If the cause is an external link, contact the site's webmaster and advise them of the issue. If you get a lot of traffic from that site, create a special page to capture these visitors, explain the problem and redirect them to the correct page. If the problem is your own -- fix it.
How Do People Find Your Site?
Your site's statistics will tell you where your visitors come from -- through a search engine such as Google, through ads you are paying for or referred to your site by another site. For example, if you get a lot of referrals from another website you might think it worthwhile to advertise on that site or offer a giveaway to encourage more visitors from there.
You should also let that site owner know when you have something new in stock that would be appreciated by their visitors. While you want people searching for your products to find you through a search engine, it's even better when another site recommends and encourages its visitors to go to your site.
 Google Analytics is another free service that will tell you a lot of information about your site's statistics.
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A good referral can result in significant increases in your visitor traffic in the short and long term, but you won't know this is happening if you don't track where your visitors come from. And you can't focus your marketing strategies to capitalize on good relationships with website owners if you don't know they are referring visitors to you.
What Do Visitors Do on Your site?
Your website statistics will provide you with information about the most popular pages on your site. These might vary week to week depending on referral traffic, but over time you should see which pages receive the most visitors. You should keep these popular up-to-date and focus on improving in any future website design.
If these pages showcase products, and if they don't convert into sales at the expected rate based on the traffic they get, then ask yourself (or your customers) why they aren't buying. If these pages lead to sales, consider adding complementary products to your inventory or link these product pages to other complementary products you already have in stock to increase sales even further.
How Long Do They Stay?
Other data you can glean from your visitor statistics include the amount of time that people spend on your site and the average number of pages they view. This will tell you how exciting your site is for visitors and whether they find what they came looking for. If you have lots of visitors who stay for only a few seconds and then leave, then you're losing the visitors you've worked hard to attract.
Look at where they come from and what pages they are visiting to determine why they leave so quickly. You may need to research and talk to people to uncover the underlying problems, but you won't know they are there if you don't look for them. Visitors who leave quickly are an opportunity -- if you can keep these visitors on your site longer you have a better chance of selling to them.
What Search Terms Do They Use?
Many visitors will find your website through a search engine and chances are it's Google. Your site's statistics will confirm not only which search engine visitors use, but what keywords they were searching for. Use this data to improve your position in search engines.
 Creating a custom 404 Page lets you redirect visitors to your site when they are looking for a page that can't be found.
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If you're being found using search words that don't accurately describe your site, focus on your SEO efforts to improve your visibility for the terms that will attract the visitors you want. Alternately, the keywords that are leading visitors to your site might indicate opportunities for tweaking your product line to meet an untapped need.
If you don't regularly check and analyze your site's visitor statistics then, to a large extent, you don't know much about a sizeable proportion of your visitors. While you might know a lot about the people who buy from you, you can impact your sales substantially from the people who visit but don't buy. Information you unearth through studying your web visitor statistics will show you the way to turn these people from tire-kickers into buyers.
Helen Bradley is a respected international journalist writing regularly for small business and computer publications in the USA, Canada, South Africa, UK and Australia. You can learn more about her at her Web site, HelenBradley.com
You'll find lots more software tips and tutorials from Helen Bradley in our Small Business In-Depth series, How-To With Helen Bradley.
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