Counters/Statistics

The purpose of collecting statistics from visitors is to make informed decisions regarding the content of your web site. Alumni.cornell has purchased a statistics program that tracks page loads, unique visitors, returning visitors, popular pages, entry pages, exit pages, visitor length, browser and operating system information, screen resolution, geographical location of visitors and many other valuable statistics such as keyword analysis, recent pageload activity, search engines etc.  All statistics can be output to a Microsoft Excel file.

Sample Statistics

Above is a screenshot for alumni.cornell statistics.  This chart is a summary of activity.  

What you are seeing

There are three different types of statistcs shown above

• Page Loads (green)
• Unique Visitors (blue)
• Returning Visitors (orange)

Page loads

Page Loads are nothing more than the total number of times pages with your tracking code on it were loaded. If the number of page loads was 10, that would mean that pages were loaded ten times. This could mean that one person accessed 10 pages or that 10 people accessed one page (or any combination in between).

Unique Visitors

A unique visitor means that is a single computer has accessed your site. If your unique visitors equals 10, that means that 10 people have visited your site.  Please note that returning visitors are figured into first time visitors to equal your unique visitors. This is the single best statistic to determine how many actual PEOPLE are visiting your site on any given day.

Returning Visitors

Returning visitors are people who have returned to your site.

Using the data to your advantage

EXAMPLE CASE
Note that according to the statistics, Friday had the most number of visitors for the week.  This could be because Friday was Dragon Day at Cornell.  However, we also know that that is the day that we sent out our alumni mailer.  If we were to look at last month's statistics (by using the interface below the chart) we would see that there are large spikes in page loads and unique visitors corresponding to the release of each mailer. This means that interest peaked directly following the mailer and that we would be wise to have fresh content available prior to the release of each mailer.