What Statistical Provider to Use & How to Use Them

There are a variety of different sites and programs offering to track and provide you with statistical data. It is daunting, but there are a few key ones that are can be considered industry standard. Some of them are more useful than others, but other times it may depend on your industry.

Alexa used to be an often-cited metric/statistic — your Alexa rank. Alexa ranks and tracks website from users that use their Toolbar. Your Alexa rank is where your web site ranks in terms of traffic/popularity/reach out of all websites. One reason Alexa ranking is not necessarily an important metric is because some web site owners have found a way to trick the mechanism and create a higher than accurate ranking. Another reason is that not enough is known about the Alexa Toolbar population, which means we cannot infer whether it is a normal population or not. There may be bias, which would lead to less accurate results. In my particular industry–beauty–I don’t think many know how to fake Alexa ranking, so I still do keep an eye on my Alexa ranking.

Compete is a web traffic analysis service that provides its service via their toolbar for users, ISPs, etc. According to Wikipedia, Compete has 2 million members as of 2008. One downfall in Compete is that it is often inaccurate for web administrators. For instance, this is the least accurate for my primary blog–by leaps and bounds.

ComScore is a professional tool used by industry big wigs, media relations, public relations, etc. They measure the internet audience by industry and provide key statistics, demographics, and other metrics. They also provide other consulting services, depending on your need. Most people will not be using ComScore themselves, but you might find yourself asked to assign your ComScore traffic to another media entity (many advertising networks make this a requirement). This allows them to include your web site’s traffic into theirs as one big entity.

Google Analytics is likely to be the go-to for site statistics, both on a personal/user level, but also by professionals. Whenever I am asked for proof of my web statistics, I’m asked for my Google Analytics report. I also find that Google Analytics offers just about everything I need to know about my site, from where people click to how many pageviews each post is receiving in a month or day or hour.

Quantcast is similar to Compete, but they do not utilize a toolbar in order to gather statistics about web sites. Web administrators are able to get their site “quantified” by installing the analytics tracking code on their web site, which allows for more accurate measurement by Quantcast. Quantcast also provides extensive data regarding your site’s demographics, wihch can be useful, especially when selling your own advertising.

Sitemeter is a popular web statistics provider, but unfortunately, I have always found it to offer rather inflated statistics. It offers all of the basic statistics (like visitors, pageviews, etc.)

Find out which ones I use and why…

What I Use

I use three primary services:

• Alexa
• Google Analytics
• Quantcast

I regularly check my Alexa rank (once a week or so).  I don’t cite to it as a metric for success, but I do use it to track how I am doing against competing blogs.  As I mentioned in my previous statistics post, my industry is not likely to be rigging the system, so I find it a fairly accurate measure.  I figure if I’m looking across my industry, then we’re all about as likely to be measured in the same way–so it’s accurate [enough] against each other.

I compulsively check my Google Analytics reports–as much as twice daily.  I use it to look at where my visitors are coming from (referring sites), what search terms are generating the most traffic (search referrers), what the top content was for the day (content drilldown), and an overall snapshot at visitors, visits, and pageviews for the day.

I regularly check Quantcast (once a week or so).  I find Quantcast to be accurate, if not cynically so (because my Quantcast data is always slightly less than Google Analytics).  Several of my competitors are Quantified as well, so I can easily compare my site to theirs and know I am doing so accurately.  You’ll find most people are rather secretive about their statistics, so it can be hard to analyze competitors.

Web Statistics 101: An Introduction

What Are Web Statistics

Web statistics are descriptive metrics about your site, its visitors, content, browsability, and the like.  Web statistics can be as simple as tracking how many people visit your page to as detailed as tracking what kind of internet connection those people are using to view your site.

Why Stats Matter

Statistics matter because they tell you a story about your site.  You can chart your blog’s growth by having months of statistical data to see how, where, and when your visitors are coming from.  If you want to see what kind of search terms people use to find your site, you can get that information.  If you’re wondering if a big site has linked you, statistical data will often provide you with those details.

A secondary point is that other companies and networks utilize web statistics in order to create deals, contracts, and opportunities with you.  If you want to join an advertising network, you’ll often be asked for your site statistics–especially if you’re looking to cut a better deal.

Find out what are some key statistics and what they mean!

What Stats You Want to Use

First, all stats are good.  There’s really no reason not to see as many different statistics as are available to you.  I’m going to break down some of the key statistics, ones that you have probably heard before but might not know why they matter.  I consider Google Analytics to be my primary statistical tool, so you might have to cross-reference between that and your personal statistical tool preference if the terminology isn’t quite exact.

Visits:  every time a person visits your website, whether they view one page or twenty, they have just increased your visits’ count by one.  Visits does care about the uniqueness of a person’s visit — every single time they load up your site, it counts as one visit.  This is a good metric that provides data on visitor loyalty.

Unique Visitors:  each person who visits your site, no matter how many times they do so, is only counted towards this metric once.  This is a good metric that provides data on how many individual people you are reaching.

Pageviews:  for each page a visitor views on your page, it counts as one pageview.  Pageviews indicate how well your content appeals to your audience; are people finding your site and leaving without going to another page?  Are your users consistently viewing five pages or more per visit?  When it comes to your advertising inventory, pageviews helps you assess how large that inventory is.  For instance, a standard is three premium graphic advertising (728×90 leaderboard, 160×600 wide skyscraper, 300×250 medium rectangle) per page.  If you get 1,000 pageviews per day, this means you can serve a maximum of 3,000 ads per day.

Average Time on Site: This metric lets you understand user behavior on an average.  Of course, loyal readers will likely spend more time on your site than passerbys.  However, the average still lets you know how engaging your site is.  The longer the better, of course.

Bounce Rate: This is a measurement of how quickly people are leaving your site without being engaged (clicking links/pages to go deeper).  While a useful metric on occasion, it doesn’t always tell the full story.  If you’re running a blog with ten full entries published on the first page, you may have a high bounce rate (50% or higher), but it doesn’t mean people aren’t reading.

Direct Traffic: This is a measurement of traffic that is coming from people typing your URL into their browser, visiting from a bookmark, and the like.

Referring Sites: This is a measurement of traffic coming from links to your site on someone else’s site.

[Traffic from] Search Engines: This is a measurement of traffic coming in from people searching on various search engines, your site turning up as a result for their search query, and then clicking on your result.