Quikonnex provides traffic statistics at the item level for each month your channel is active. You can tell how many "hits" or "pings" each item received and how many UNIQUE visits each item received. If you're interested in finding out where the visits are coming from, you can view the details of each visit by clicking on the number for which you want to see details.

You can access your channel statistics using the Master Statistics Manager link at the top (or bottom) of the Channel Manager page or from the QuikView menu items in the Q Members/Publishers area menu. The initial panel will provide a summary by item (url) of the number of hits and unique visits in the current month. IF YOUR CHANNEL LIFE spans more than one month, you will see a dropdown box at the top of the page. Using this dropdown box, you can select earlier months for which to view channel statistics. (Sorry...Quikonnex is good, but it can't see the future yet!)

You can view distinct details by item (url) by date and even by individual hit or view. Very powerful stuff! Play around with the links - select different dates, click on different links, numbers, etc. Don't let the term "statistics" scare you. What you're really looking at is just a report. It's information. Nothing more. Take it a step at a time. First, click the link for your main main channel page (page/qname....example: page/kicktheemailhabit). You will see a calendar with X number of hits, which reflects the number of hits or pings that main page received from search engines, blogs, and actual visitors. Next you will see X number of visitors, which is the number of UNIQUE visitors based on the host or ip address captured from that visit. If you click on the DETAILS link at the bottom of that date, you will see the details of the UNIQUE VISITORS, including the DATE, TIME, HOST (or IP), and REFERER. So you now know what date and time the visit occurred, the source of the visit and the webpage from which the visitor came.





Putting it all together...

So what does the HOST info mean??...
If you see an IP address (numbers like 123.45.897.0 ), that is typically an individual visiting you from their home IP address. The same is true when you see the word USER, IP, CABLE or HOST in that field. Common internet service providers (ISP's) include att.net, aol.com, mindspring.com, comcast.net, verizon.net, sbcglobal.net, netzero, etc. If the HOST address includes the words SPIDER, SEARCH or CRAWLER, that's usually a search engine crawling your channel and gathering information to add to their database. I'm sure there are other manual and automated sources for visits, but these are the more common ones.

And what about REFERER??...
Simply put, this is the url that referred the visitor to your site. That means the visitor clicked a link on that REFERER site, which brought them to the channel item the statistics represent. You can also get a feel for whether the sites referring visits are US or international by looking for the country specific extentions, like .uk (united kingdom) or .au (australia).





Okay, so you know WHO was there and you know WHERE they came from and you know WHAT they read while they were there, but what do you do with that information?

One thing you can do is see how much interest is being generated by specific topics. Those receiving the least traffic you can probably drop from your future efforts. Those receiving the most interest are probably worthy of a little more attention and effort. Just be careful not to judge too quickly. Give your channel statistics at least 6 months before making any serious changes. Sometimes it just takes time for people to find you. Also, trends change quickly on the internet and some trends are cyclical. Don't delete anything unless you think it's just horrible stuff. Let it ride and watch the statistics.





Another thing you can do is look at the visit patterns for trends in the dates or times people are visiting. Then plan you posts accordingly using the future timestamp feature discussed in the previous chapter. You might even finds time trends that are different based on topics. It could be that the office crowd is out there early in the morning before going to work while the work at home crowd takes care of early morning errands, running through email and getting other business and family priorities handled before settling in for the day on their internet business related tasks. Naturally, those tasks include checking out YOUR recent posts!

By having that REFERER information, you can tell who is sending people to your site and you can tell which of your own webpages or items are bringing that item (hence that subject, topic, service, product, etc) the most traffic. So you can further target your own efforts by focusing your website updates/leads to the top REFERING pages. You can also consider further cross-promotion with your top REFERERS to further exploit the traffic flow.

By having the HOST information, you can often tell the geographical source, by looking for country specific extensions in the HOST address. If all of your traffic is from the US, you might choose to drop some international content and 1focus on US customers. Then again, maybe you WANT to draw more international traffic. In that case, you can look for ways to pull in viewers from those other countries by seeking directories and blogs in which you can list your channel to draw that international traffic.

You can plan your article writing topics proportional to the traffic patterns on the items already posted. You might choose to add new topics. You might try to categorize your posts. You might even decide that you want to really concentrate on syndicating specific categories of topics, so you might create a subchannel, which will allow you to syndicate JUST those specific items. (Subchannels are discussed in chapter 9, so keep reading!)





Information is power. Channel statistics are the information you need to power up your channel. Take full advantage of them. Think outside the box and be creative with the possibilities.

By the way, try getting the level of statistical details provided by Quikonnex was not even possible with my email list host provider, for which I paid a minimum of two times, and occasionally even five times, as much as Quikonnex charges for the Business/Publisher package. This is just another way that the founders of Quikonnex cater to their business/publisher clients to provide value-added features to help you grow your business and target your audience.

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