Break Down Your Website Traffic with a Stacked Area Graph
I recently enjoyed a post on SEOmoz about presenting web traffic stats in a more meaningful and useful way. I found this to be a great way to visualize how traffic to different sections of a site compares over time.
I'd been wondering how the different sections of my Elements of Design site had been performing and so thought it would be useful to do the same analysis for it.
Here's the chart that resulted (covering the most popular sections of the site):
Elements of Design % of total page views by section (click to view larger)
It was interesting to see what a large and consistent percentage of overall traffic the Login Forms section represented. Obviously, a lot of people are looking for inspiration and guidance with designing these.
You can also see how the Buttons section, which I introduced in December 2009, grew to about 11% of traffic over the next month before tailing off to a steady 6-7% of page views.
In this example I used percentages rather than raw numbers to more easily show how the different sections compare against each other. Of course, this doesn't show how the each section is performing in absolute terms over time (is traffic growing or falling), so both views have their uses.
Posted on: August 25, 2010 | 4 Comments
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4 Comments Posted
Interesting, breaks away from google analytics. Will have a go at using this.
Keep on bloggin'
1. Posted by Danny Cheeseman on August 28, 2010
This way of visualising web traffic stats through a stacked area graph is really useful. The graph allows you to clearly see which sections of design consist of what percentage.
This is also useful for visualising how traffic to different sections of the site compares over time. Which in turn allows you to monitor and improve if necessary.
Finally as you mentioned, the view of percentages doesn't show if traffic is growing or falling. However I think this is the only down side of this visualistaion.
2. Posted by Hannah Hurst on September 10, 2010
Interesting information, this is an equivalent of google analytics or am i wrong?
3. Posted by webdesign groningen on September 16, 2010
This will help to the web designers that they must have to follow this standard while designing any site, especially the login forms, that i'm surprised that how can this section help site to create more visitors.
4. Posted by eCommerce Web Solution on September 16, 2010