The Smashing Business Blog

Here's why.

There's an abundance of statistics out there that you can check. From total visitors, page views, and entry pages, to search results, traffic sources and exit pages; all designed to give you a great idea about what people are doing on your site. The problem is people don't always look at the more important statistics and are just obsessed with the total number of visitors on any given day, while some even become so obsessed with stats that they are constantly changing what they do just to bring the numbers up. 

The problem with constant stat checking is that it makes you super unproductive. Think about it, if you spend 2 mins every half an hour checking your site's traffic that's 4 minutes over an hour right? Doesn't  seem like much. That's also the same as 96mins every 24 hrs but when do you every work for 24hrs straight? Very rarely. So say you're like me you work on your sites for around 15 hours a day. If you check your stats for an average of 4 mins an hour, now you're looking at around an hour in lost work time. That's more than enough time to write a blog post, catch up on emails, fix that bug on your homepage, spend more time interacting with potential customers on social networking sites or even making an hour's worth of sales! Can you afford to loose an hour a day? Think about all the sales you could be missing out on. 

Here are two of the stats that I think are useful for you to check from time to time during the day / week / month (depending on your level on desire to keep checking) 

This will give you a really good idea about where the visitors to your site are coming from. Knowing where people are coming from can direct effect your marketing strategy because if you know that a large percentage of visitors are being referred to you via Twitter, or Google Search or some other site, then it's probably a good idea to try and promote your business there a bit more often. 

Most website owners will probably disagree with me here but I think it's important to know which pages your visitors are leaving from. Are they all leaving on your pricing page? Maybe your pricing structure is turning them off or the prices you are giving aren't competitive enough. Is everyone leaving via your blog? This might mean that your blog content is poor and that your visitors are becoming disinterested or maybe you haven't provided them with enough call-to-action buttons to take them to other areas of your website. 

There's really no need to worry about quiet days. I know lots of small online business owners do, it's just like having a bricks and mortar shop and having no one come in for the day. It's not ideal but it's just one of those things. No need to worry too much. Granted if you have a very quiet week when no one comes in at all then maybe it's time to investigate a little bit but if it's just a quiet day thats just part of business.Try to not fret about your stats and instead worry more about making those sales.