Learning to research web site traffic isn’t complicated if you follow five steps.

Research Web Site Traffic: Step 1 – Set Up A Google Analytics Account

Your first step in researching your web site traffic is to set up a way to monitor it. There are several paid and free traffic monitors available, but I recommend Google Analytics. It’s free and collects lots of statistics.

For example, it reveals the number of visitors that you’re getting from search engines, from direct traffic, and from referring sites. You need this information to monitor which sources you’re doing well with and for which you need to increase your efforts.

It also provides the keywords used when the search engines send visitors to your site, and the pages that get the most traffic. Furthermore, it provides bounce rate and other revealing information that can guide you in improving your site and its content.

So if you haven’t already established a Google Analytics account, do it today so you can start gathering information to research web site traffic.

Research Web Site Traffic: Step 2 – Record Your Visitors At Least Monthly

Although you’ll be analyzing your web site traffic monthly, don’t wait until the first of the month to get started. Start now. Then you can analyze monthly from your start date, or you can use whatever days you have during your first month and start a new month on the first.

For example, I started on the 23rd, analyzed the 23rd through the 31st as my first month and started a new month with the 1st. But I could have considered the 23rd of my first month to the 22nd of the next month as one month. I choose to stick to calendar months, but either method works.

Research Web Site Traffic: Step 3 – Determine Visitor Statistics

You’ll need to determine at least the range, mean, and high and low number of visitors per day for your site. The mode and medium can also be helpful, but not as much.

Now don’t freak about these statistical terms. They are really simple as the definitions and instructions below illustrate:

High - the most number of visitors that you got for any one day. Just look for the highest number and record it as your high. The high for my visitors in October was 139, the top number in the list.

Low - the least number of visitors that you got for any one day. Look for the lowest number and record it as your low. The low for my visitors in October was 51, the bottom number in the list.

Range - the low to the high. Your range for any month will be from your lowest number to your highest number. My range for October was 51 to 139.

Mean – the average number of visitors per day. To get the mean just add up the number per day and divide by the number of days.

Median – this is the middle number in your range. You just list every number and every occurrence of it from high to low. Your list will look much like the one provided here. Divide the number of days by two, and then count until you get to the middle number. My mean for October was 90

Mode – The most common number. In my list four numbers appear twice. Because none appear more than the others, there really is no mode in this small sample.

Research Web Site Traffic: Step 4 – Graph Your Visitors By Traffic Sources

Many programs enable you to produce graphs or charts. I find Microsoft Word’s chart function to work well, and used it to produce the two charts below. Just experiment to assure that you are putting your numbers in the data worksheet correctly for your program.

For example, to get the charts below, I had to record the visitor numbers across rows for each source of traffic. When there are so many numbers, my inclination is to put them into columns. But word won’t produce the chart correctly if I do.

Notice that each traffic source has it’s own line. This enables you to quickly see where your traffic comes from and where you need to pursue more traffic. For example, the charts below visually demonstrate that I don’t get enough direct and referral traffic. My search traffic is growing, and that’s good, but over reliance on any one source of traffic is not.

Research Web Site Traffic: Step 5 – Analyze The Results

You can use actual numbers as the charts below do, or you can use percentages as I did for my September web site traffic analysis. You can read it by clicking on the prior link to see how your analysis using percentages will differ from your analysis using actual numbers below:

Research Web Site Traffic: Step 6 – Compare Months To Determine Growth

One month of research on your web site traffic will help you, but you’ll learn most by comparing months, and keeping records across months. For example, statistics and the charts for September and October reveal that my total traffic and search traffic increased from September to October. But my referral and direct traffic decreased.

Charts reveal this information visually, while statistics reveal it verbally and mathematically. You may find one or the other more helpful, but I like to use both information and statistics. Below is my verbal comparison of September’s and October’s most important visitor statistics:

September brought two days with 165 visitors, and another three days with100 or more visitors (128, 104 and 100). Daily visits ranged from a low of 44 to the high of 165, with a mean of 85 visitors per day.

October brought twice as many 100+ visitor days. Twelve days produced more than 100 visitors compared to September’s five days. Still the high for October was lower than for September. The low (51), and the average visitor per day (92) were also higher.

I could do a similar analysis for each traffic source, but I think you get the idea. If not, please feel free to leave a comment with your questions. I’ll try to get back to you quickly.

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Posted 11-12-08: How To Research Web Site Traffic

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Just as the marketing research process is time-consuming if you do it yourself. It’s quite expensive to hire a marketing agency to do it for you.

Agency personnel involved in the marketing research process are professionals. Researchers usually have at least a master’s degree and substantial research experience. So their time isn’t cheap. Plus, you’ll have an account executive assigned to you, who will also rack up billable hours.

So depending on where you live, you’re looking at a hefty agency bill for working through the marketing research process that I described in my last post.

Some small business owners don’t think they can afford to spend time nor money on the marketing research process. Plus a few small business owners don’t understand the importance of marketing research. They’d rather spend their money on tactics. Even if the tactics don’t work, they feel like they get more for their money.

The truth is that time and money spent through the marketing research process is a great investment because it saves you from wasting resources on ineffective tactics. Money spent on target marketing research is a particularly good investment because it keeps you from wasting marketing resources on people who aren’t ever going to buy what you sell.

Still if you don’t have the money to invest, you don’t have the money to invest. As my Daddy used to say “You can’t get blood from a turnip.” So what do you do? I’ve got the answer for you.

I offer a FREE, customized target market analysis. It will get you started with your marketing research process. To get your FREE target market analysis, complete the form below:

When you confirm your information, you’ll be given a user name, password and link to the instant target market page.

You choose demographic options from five drop-down menus, hit the submit button and instantly get your report. It will list the best appeals for your target market and for some, it’ll also list the best media, additional demographic information, income, buying behavior, and more.

Each target market analysis is customized so yours may not provide all this information, but it’s sure to give you more information than you’ve ever known about your target market. It’s instant and doesn’t cost anything. It’s the cheapest and easiest way to start a marketing research process.

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Why Is Target Marketing Important?

Posted 11-3-08: The Marketing Research Process:
Time Consuming, Expensive?

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This post on marketing research and development, is the third in a series. It covers developing a profitable and marketable product, and marketing your product.

But before you’re ready to take these steps in the marketing research and development process, you first need to take the first four steps. You can access posts related to them below:

Marketing Research And Development 1 – Steps 1 and 2

Marketing Research And Development 2 – Steps 3 and 4

Marketing Research And Development: Developing a Profitable and Marketable Product

After completing you marketing research from the first four steps, you’ll have a good idea of what you’re product will be like. So now you have to make a “go or “no go” decision.

To make this decision, you need a firm estimate of what you product will cost per unit and solid research to determine what you can sell for. You should have gotten price information from your survey. No you have to get some bids to determine cost information.

Don’t get bids for more units of the product than you believe you can sell during start-up.

You’re going to need lots of money for marketing and distribution. So don’t tie up all your funds in product development and build an inventory that becomes a liability if you don’t sell it quickly.

If the difference between what it costs you and what you can sell it for isn’t enough to cover production, marketing, distribution and overhead, you must make a “no go” decision.

I know it’s hard to put so much time and money into researching a product and then decide not to produce it. But that’s not nearly as hard on your business as having an inventory that you can’t sell at a profit.

If you determine that you can make a profit, you make a “go” decision and proceed to have your product developed.

Marketing Research And Development: Marketing Your Product

Once you’ve made your “go” decision, you need to develop a marketing plan and campaign. You conducted much of your marketing research during the first four steps. Now you need to incorporate that research in your marketing planning and your first marketing campaign.

In fact you may need multiple campaigns: one for potential customers, another for retailers and distributors, and perhaps another for supporters and influencers.

Many businesses start their first consumer marketing campaign while the product is still in production because they believe creating the demand before the supply is provided helps to get distributors and retailers for their products.

I think it a better idea to target your distributors and retailers with your first marketing campaign. For instance, you can advertise in industry journals, send salespeople out to meet retailers and to persuade them to carry your product.

You can offer them exclusivity within a geographical area and include their shops in your first commercial marketing campaign.

All campaigns are included in your marketing plan, but require unique research and planning within each campaign.

With the right marketing planning, the right campaigns targeted at various target markets, and good financial decisions, your product should be a success – thanks to following the six steps in the marketing research and development process.

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Posted 10-22-06: Marketing Research And Development 3

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I’m covering marketing research and development in this series of posts. This second post in the series covers steps 3 and 4 in the marketing research and development process.

My last post covered the first two steps. If you missed it, you can access by clicking the link below:

Marketing Research And Development 1

Steps three and four include discovering a needed product and deciding on the product’s features.

Marketing Research And Development: Discovering A Needed Product

This step determines whether developing your product is worthwhile.

Just because people express needs doesn’t mean they are willing to exchange their money for fulfilling those needs. If they aren’t willing to pay you enough to make a profit, then you shouldn’t develop a product.

To learn if you can develop a profitable product, you can administer a survey to a random sample of target market members. Like a focus group, a survey has guidelines that you need to follow to assure that your results are valid. You can access my guidelines at

Strategic Publications: Questionnaires

Your survey questionnaire should ask questions to determine people’s attitudes about:

• the needs,
• how important those needs are to them,
• how it would benefit them to have those needs met,
• and what they would be willing to pay for those benefits.

This information will help you to decide what features your product should include.

Marketing Research And Development: Deciding Features To Provide Desired Benefits

People don’t buy for features. They buy for benefits. But you have to build in benefits with product features.

Your survey questions on benefits will tell you what features your product needs to have.

For example, my research on small business owners determined that they are always pressed for time and want products that will save them time. I knew that my e-book – Know ‘em Sell ‘em: How To Discover The Best Appeals For Your Target Market provides a quick way to do target market research, but I wanted to make it even faster for small business owners to get this research.

So I took all the major characteristics for each demographic segment, organized them and had a programmer develop a program to produce a target market analysis instantly. You just select demographics from five drop-down menus, hit the submit button, and instantly get a customized target market analysis.

You can try it for FREE by completing the form below:

You need to also develop features to meet your target market’s needs. Once you’ve decided on what features you want to include in your product, you’re ready to take the next step in the marketing research and development process.

Take the next step by clicking the link below:

Marketing Research And Development 3

Posted 10-20-08: Marketing Research And Development 2

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Marketing research and development includes several major steps:

1. Analyzing The Market
2. Determining The Target Market
3. Discovering A Needed Product
4. Deciding Features To Provide Desired Benefits
5. Developing a Profitable and Marketable Product
6. Marketing Your Product

I’m covering the first two of these steps in today’s post and will cover the remaining ones in consecutive posts.

Marketing Research And Development: Analyzing The Market

Analyzing the market uses marketing research to discover unmet needs. It includes two major kinds of marketing research.

Qualitative research gathers lots of information and then attempts to make sense of that information. It’s easy to start, but difficult to analyze.

Quantitative research uses data that can be converted to numbers. It’s difficult to set up, but easy to analyze using statistical software.

Analyzing the market starts with qualitative research and moves to quantitative research. The two steps in this post use qualitative research.

The first step is to analyze the market by monitoring it to discover people’s expressed needs. For example, if you’re business is on line, you can monitor forums and social networking sites in your niche. If your business is off line, you can keep track of what people request that you don’t have and listen as potential customers talk.

You record all expressed needs, looking for those mentioned most often. This can be difficult because people express the same needs in different words. You have to interpret what they mean. Then you categorize the needs and look for commonalities between them.

You also record as much information as available about the people expressing the needs.

Monitoring the environment is a time consuming process, but prepares you for the next step in the marketing research and development.

Marketing Research And Development: Determining The Target Market

Your records about the people expressing needs, provide the first clues about your target market.

• Are they primarily one gender or one age group?
• Are their needs related to a certain experience or education level?
• What do they have in common beyond expressing the need?

Once you’ve answered these questions, you can conduct more research with similar people. You can gather a group of them and ask them questions about the needs. This group meeting of target market members is called a focus group.

There are guidelines for conducting a good focus group that you should consider if you plan to do it yourself. You can access mine at another of my sites linked below:

Strategic Publications: Focus Groups

Many marketing and public relations agencies will do an excellent job for you. However, expect to pay thousands for one focus group.

After the focus group is completed and analyzed, you can use the information to conduct a survey with more target market members.

Following these two steps starts developing effective marketing research and development.

In my next post, I’ll cover using surveys to discover a needed product, and the features that it should include. You can access it below:

Marketing Research And Development 2

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Posted 10-17-08: Marketing Research And Development 1

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