As more consumers turn to the Web for information about remodelers in their area, the visibility of a company's Web site has become increasingly important. But how can you be sure that your site is getting the amount of traffic you desire and, more importantly, the right kind of traffic?
Enter VisiStat, a Web analytics product that measures the flow of traffic to users' Web sites and — by analyzing the search keywords visitors use to find the site — how relevant that traffic really is.
“VisiStat takes the blinders off of your Web site,” says Tina Bean, one of VisiStat's founders. Not only does the product measure the number of users who visit your site during a given period, but it indicates how long they stayed once they got there, how many pages they clicked through, and more — all presented in easy-to-read, graphics-heavy reports.
DIRECT REPORTS VisiStat can create daily, weekly, monthly, or annual reports that demonstrate trends in Web traffic, Bean says. It can also create reports that show the amount of traffic to individual pages so that remodelers can instantly see in what parts of their site visitors are most interested.
The program has the ability to create a report (right) detailing which search keywords visitors are typing into search engines to find your site, which allows you to see what sorts of services are most in demand in your area.
“So if you see that most people are visiting your site for your custom woodworking, you can identify this as a service to highlight in your marketing efforts,” Bean explains. The reports also tell you which outside sites are sending you the most traffic, so you can gauge whether or not your e-newsletter or vendor sites are succeeding in directing consumers to your home page.
VisiStat is installed on your company's Web site by entering a piece of code — provided by VisiStat — into the Web site. There's no software to install, and because the service is Web-based, any upgrades to the product are automatically loaded onto the user's site, ensuring that you'll always have the most up-to-date version.
And at a cost of as little as $20 per month, the potential benefits far outweigh the investment.
