Website Statistics Tell The Story

Below are stats from a tourism business who had a membership in both NOSTA and Sunset Country in 2005 but neglected to use sunset country in 2006. I was looking at why this businesses referrals had dropped off and this is what I found.

This businesses stats show an overall increase in traffic but they could have done much better with if they had made a decision based on traffic.

It is not important who this is or why a membership lapsed, what is important is that websites have stats, some better than others and it is very important to use them to make good business decisions. These stats show that sunset country is much more successful at drawing and referring traffic than nosta has been.

Additionally I think it is important to look at where our tax dollars are being invested (by fednor and others). We need to be able to see evidence of who is being effective and who is not meeting the mark across all mediums of advertising. Currently there are very few checks and balances to verify that we are investing wisely and seeing returns on our investments. Canada uses Not-For-Profit organizations to manage or accomplish many projects. Sometimes it is important to a larger group that an organization be successful.

Amik Technology believes that it is important that we as a community set goals, invest and partner to achieve results, and become more aware of our efforts and failures so that we develop rather than squander our future and prosperity in areas like tourism.

If you have a website you should have referring domain traffic statistics avialable to you. In this example we can see that in January 2005 sunset Country websites brought in 113 referrals compared to 16 from the City of Thunder Bay, 8 from thunderbaytoursim.com and 4 from NOSTA.

Domain		Monthly View: January 2005 Visits	Monthly View: January 2006 Visits	% Change Visits
1.	Direct Traffic	330	396	20.00%
2.	google. com	312	327	4.81%
3.	google. ca	196	242	23.47%
4.	yahoo. com	113	204	80.53%
5.	msn. com	68	178	161.76%
6.	google. co. uk	57	26	-54.39%
7.	interneal links	49	65	32.65%
8.	ontariossunsetcountry. ca	38	0	-100.00%
9.	wabakimi. on.ca	29	27	-6.90%
10.	paddlingontario. com	21	23	9.52%
11.	sympatico.msn. ca	20	84	320.00%
12.	worldweb. com	18	0	-100.00%
13.	ontarioresortsandlodges. ca	18	0	-100.00%
14.	thunderbay.ca	16	20	25.00%
15.	aol. com	16	21	31.25%
16.	noto.net	14	22	57.14%
17.	ontariotowns . net	12	0	-100.00%
18.	ask. com	11	14	27.27%
19.	sunsetcountry. net	11	0	-100.00%
20.	googlesyndication.com	11	0	-100.00%
21.	netscape.com	10	3	-70.00%
22.	mywebsearch. com	9	5	-44.44%
23.	freemap. ca	9	5	-44.44%
24.	ontariomoosehunting. ca	8	0	-100.00%
25.	snowontario.ca	8	0	-100.00%
26.	thunderbaytourism. com	8	12	50.00%
27.	canoenorthwestontario. ca	7	0	-100.00%
28.	paddling. net	7	9	28.57%
29.	tbo. ca	7	10	42.86%
30.	resortcountry. com	6	8	33.33%
31.	outdoorwebsite.com	6	0	-100.00%
32.	dogpile.com	6	10	66.67%
33.	ontariooutdoor.com	6	5	-16.67%
34.	earthlink.net	5	3	-40.00%
35.	ask.co.uk	5	0	-100.00%
36.	ontariowalleyefishing.ca	4	0	-100.00%
37.	greenontario . org	4	5	25.00%
38.	google. se	4	1	-75.00%
39.	nosta.on.ca	4	3	-25.00%
40.	google.be	4	2	-50.00%
41.	superiortrails.com	4	13	225.00%
42.	nextag.com	4	0	-100.00%
43.	tbayicity.com	4	4	0.00%
44.	google.fi	3	1	-66.67%
45.	altavista. com	3	4	33.33%
46.	comcast. net	3	1	-66.67%
47.	aol. co. uk	3	3	0.00%
48.	rollc. com	3	3	0.00%
49.	ontariotrave l. net	3	4	33.33%
50.	cometsystems . com	3	0	-100.00%
	Total	1,630	1,944	19.26%