It's great when you have analytic data to judge the performance of your website, but have you noticed that the reports get Longer and longer?  Some things may not have much weight on how or when you make decisions, but others are extremely valuable.

During the last couple weeks I have been going through a lot of these reports with clients.  I send these out monthly, but whenever I ask if they are getting looked at I hear a few common responses: "yes," "too busy", "I only look when business is slow" and "they don't really make sense to me."

I understand how traffic reports could look confusing if you don't live in the internet world so this post will serve as a basic guide of things I look at when reviewing web traffic reports.  It isn't everything, but it is a start.  If you feel like I've missed anything important please add it to the comments below.

Traffic:

• total visitors broken out by search engines (funny to see some people can't let go of old favorites)
• visits per page
• total page views per visit (I like to see a 3:1 ratio at minimum)
• branded traffic vs non branded (think law firm name vs. divorce lawyer)
• bounce rate
• average time on site
• impressions vs clicks