Most people never bother to look at the statistics program that comes with virtually every website because few realize the goldmine of information it contains.

Your website statistics hold the key for understanding your traffic, improving sales and increasing the overall effectiveness of your online selling. Whether you realize it or not, your website has 'critical numbers' that enable you to measure the overall success of your Internet presence.

Any serious website operator should understand the four most important numbers: Hits; Unique, Targeted Visitors; Leads; Sales.

Hits - Hits are typically page views, whether by the same or different visitors, and indicate overall activity on the site.

A lot of hits shows activity (usually a good thing), but doesn't necessarily mean you've had a high number of visitors. Search engine 'spiders' and surfers hitting their back buttons also up the hit count.

Research has shown that, depending on the size of your site, the ratio of hits to visitors will range anywhere from 2 to 1 all the way up to 12 to 1.

Unique, Targeted Visitors - people surfing to your site who have not been there before within a certain period of time. Depending on the statistics program you use, a unique visitor may be someone who hasn't been to your site in a day or a week, while in other programs a visitor remains unique until you reset the stats.

You must understand how your stats program classifies unique visitors so you don't mistakenly believe your site is getting 30 unique visitors a day only to find out it is the same 30 people coming back day after day!

A 'targeted' visitor means that the visitor has an interest in what you are selling or promoting, this is usually demonstrated by keyword searches at a search engine or by clicking targeted advertisements.

It does you no good to attract general traffic to your site -you want unique, targeted visitors actively seeking your product or service.

Leads - a valid email address usually makes the best 'lead' since people can and do give fake names and addresses online. If someone won't give you a valid email address, chances are they won't give you their credit card to make a purchase either.

Email leads enable you to measure interest and to follow up with prospects. Once you know the number of unique visitors to your site you can calculate the percentage of leads you develop and concentrate on ways to improve your conversion by testing different offers and headlines.

Sales - the number of sales as compared to unique visitors represents your most critical statistic because it tells you whether or not you've made a profit.

For every hundred visitors to your site, how many sales do you make and how much money do you net?

Most failed dot-com's never bothered to answer this simple question.

Selling on the web is a 'numbers game' - learn how to make the numbers work for you!

About the author:
Jim Edwards is a syndicated newspaper columnist and the co- author of an amazing new ebook, "Turn Words Into Traffic," that will teach you how to use free articles to quickly drive thousands of targeted visitors to your website or affiliate link! Click Here ==> http://www.turnwordsintotraffic.com