Generating and Monitoring Web Site Traffic

Contributed by Walter Stevens

The Importance of Generating Web Site Traffic

Generating web site traffic is a matter of great importance for any web site. We do not create web sites simply for the fun and pleasure of creating them, although this is a joy for many, but that our ideas, thoughts, interests, or business might be shared with the world through one of the most powerful tools for the dissemination of information in the history of Man. When we build web sites, we want people to come and read what we have created, and in order to do this we must generate web site traffic.

Monitoring the Web Site Traffic We Generate

In order to know how much traffic we are generating on our web site, we must be able to monitor our web site traffic. When a person logs onto a web site, all of the information which makes up this web site (this includes HTML documents, images, graphics, etc.) is being sent from the online server which hosts the web site to the computer of the person viewing the site. This transfer of information we call traffic.

When we are monitoring web site traffic, the most basic method is to track these transfers of information from the hosting server to a remote location in order to count page loads. This will let us know how often our page is being loaded. However, this will not necessarily tell us how many different people are viewing our web site, or how often the same people are coming back. In order to determine this information, we must be able to break down these basic page loads into more informative data.

By keeping track of where the computer loading the information is coming from, we can know who is a new viewer and who is a returning viewer. We can also keep track of how long a person is logged into a web site. This allows us to know how many people are viewing a web site for the first time, how many people are returning to a web site, and more. This tells us exactly how much web site traffic we are generating, and how effective our marketing efforts are being.

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