Traffic Stats - how honest should we be??

[Elaine]

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Bit of a conundrum here - we are in the process of creating our Business Plan for the coming year, which involves contacting media companies with a view to attracting advertisers/sponsership.

BUT which traffic figure do we go with - we have tried 3 different analysis software

a)Weblog Expert Lite - the top end which included all the spiders etc, or

b)Fast Stats Analyser - the middle one, which reckons it doesnt count spiders

c)Absolut Analyser - the lowest but most indepth

the difference between the top and bottom is over 33%.

We certainly don't want to lead anyone astray but on the other hand we don't want to do ourselves a disservice. Do these companies take spiders etc into account when counting page impressions or unique visitors.

Happy New Year to everyone

[Supercod]

Paint yourself in as best a light as possible I would say, be ready to back up what ever you say with some kind of proof but at the end of the day like when you read 20% percentage of bad drivers are under 25 ... what they should be saying is 80% of bad drivers are over 25 but depends what kind of light you want to paint on a subject.

The outrageous lies I have read from some big companies as to traffic levels would mean even if you used the top packages results, it would still be more truthful than most.

[Mark Norville]

Like going to a bank manager with a business plan, if you say that your not going to make anything for the year and show him real stats and if you have nothing to pay the bank with there soon tell you where to go despite your honesty.

As to your worry about figures, just half whatever figure you have and thats fair and bending the truth as well.

Hardest part is when you get it, then actually meeting and breaking those targets otherwise if the company doesnt see what you`ve said after a while there just drop it as a waste of time and money.

One thing to remember, if your going to be doing promotion etc, if you cant promote yourself then need to ask how are you going to promote a company. Even though there is the learning curve unless your very lucky then you wont be an over night hit which you`ll know anyway.

[aotagain]

Spend 80% of your effort showing the quality of the site and its visitors and their relevance to advertisers and 20% of the effort on the stats numbers. Reason being if the advertisers are just buying based on impressions then they are not doing a professional job. You can easily get more revenue from a lower % of your UV's at double the rate to an advertiser that wants your visitors than 100% at half to an advertiser that's just banging ads all over the place.

Also worth producing an explanation of hits, UV's and all the other terms so that the ad. buyers understand them. You will be surprised by how many buyers don't have a clue. This will also make them question all the competition who don't explain it to them. Any harm in quoting all three stats. results ie. "its an inexact science, so we cross-check by running 3 programs...."

Ignore all above if your advertisers are all going to be ones who want to reach any old body eg. credit cards, loans ?

[adigaskell]

Could always say how many hits you expect to get, like companies always used to