Mugachab Mist7500 Web-analytics
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WEB ANALYTICS & MAKING YOUR WEB SITE STAND OUT
WEB ANALYTICS Web analytics is the process of collecting “data about the activities of people accessing your website (visitors)--how they found you, when they visited, what pages they looked at, what they bought or downloaded, and so on--and mining that data for information that can be used to improve a website”1. The type of data that is gathered includes information about how a visitor navigates pages or sections of a web page, click and conversion rates, data regarding utility of different sections of a page which can then identify sections in need of improvement or re-designing. What all this information does is help a website owner identify strengths and weaknesses of the website, identify trends, and with this information, enable them to maximize their return on investment. Data collection is normally done through embedding of code on a web page. As the visitor navigates the page using the mouse, relevant data is tracked and reported to the website owner. A recent report by the Forrester group states that web analytics will help companies derive greater insight from their data, aid in gaining a competitive advantage by having more dynamic and targeted content, and through the evidence of past performance, help companies develop more effective online programs2. MAKING YOUR WEBSITE STAND OUT
Mugacha Betty 2
A website, whether personal or business oriented, is an entrance into one’s space on the internet - an invitation to outsiders to come in and stay a while. For businesses, it is a place to lure customers into making purchases and even more than that, satisfy them and make them loyal. The same goes for personal web sites such as blogs. A successful blog will have many followers who repeatedly visit and read what the author has to say. It is therefore important for websites to have high eyeball appeal. When visitors navigate to a website, they need to know how things are organized and where to find what. An efficient and easy to use sitemap is important as it helps show where product/information is located and provide ways to get there. Content is another key factor. A website author needs to deliver specifically what clients need – be it information or products. There is no point in having a web site that does not afford customers what they are looking for. As Simon Cowes puts it, for a website stand out, a designer needs to pay attention to the website’s “audience, objective, layout, navigation, content and imagery...” 3. Knowing who your clients are enables you to customize an interface that caters to them.
For example a fashion house
designing an online store front targeted at teen girls might choose to use damask patterns, color palettes that stay in the purple/pink family, and whimsical fonts since this type of design appeals to girls in that age group. Another example may be a mother blogging about post-
Mugacha Betty 3
partum depression, who, in the process of capturing her audience with personal life stories might incorporate ads for treatment drugs or information regarding where and how to find support. Attention to the architecture, layout and design of a website is also important. Positioning of elements such as text, images, containers, decisions as to which fonts, sizes, and colors also determine if a website stands out.
Take color for instance: Color is
one design attribute that gives visitors a first impression regarding what the website is all about. Studies have shown that color has a huge impact on emotion, moods and behavior so using the right combination of color(s) can create harmony and greatly help attract and retain visitors, or on the flip side, if used incorrectly, can distract from content and repeal visitors. SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION (SEO) & SEARCH ENGINE MARKETING (SEM) Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the “process of choosing targeted keyword phrases related to a site, and ensuring that the site places well when those keyword phrases are part of a Web search” 4. Search Engine Marketing (SEM) is “the process of marketing a web site on search engines, including search engine optimization, submitting your site to the search engines and directories for organic listings, pay per inclusion, pay-per-click, banner ads or any other marketing programs offered by search engines. 5”
HTML contains elements
Mugacha Betty 4
known as Meta tags that allow users to describe the web page content, list key words among other details. Meta tags play a role in SEO in that some tag elements, such as keywords, were designed so that search engine crawlers would find your website through keywords defined in the html meta tag. However, major search engines have lessened the impact of meta tags on their page rankings algorithms or discontinued meta-tag use altogether as in the case of Google due to websites that practiced deliberate insertion of misleading keywords with intent to boost page rankings. The impacts of SEO/SEM on making a website stand out are not clear cut.
While SEO can increase page rankings and possibly rank
very highly, keywords placed in meta tags on sites that do not necessarily contain related content, or having too many keywords (known as keyword stuffing) is a practice that is frowned upon by search engines and can result in having a website banned from search engine indexes. A practice known as ‘spamdexing’ or ‘black-hat SEO’ “attempts to improve rankings in ways that are disapproved of by the search engines, or involve deception. One black hat technique uses text that is hidden, either as text colored similar to the background, in an invisible div, or positioned off screen. Another method gives a different page depending on whether the page is being requested by a human visitor or a search engine, a technique known as cloaking.”6 Dependence on SEO/SEM as a marketing tool might be detrimental to a
Mugacha Betty 5
site since search engines change their algorithms constantly and there is no guarantee of rank should the site be removed or fall in page rank as in the case of Kinderstart who sued Google for removing their name from their search index. This resulted in a loss of about 70% of traffic to their site. 6 Advantages of SEM include helping a company “reach a targeted audience, can have branding effects even in the absence of clickthroughs, and has a higher conversion when compared to SEO”7. Other benefits include no limit to your reach, because the higher your page rankings, the more people are looking at your site which may generate more traffic and business, and that search engines do not charge you every time a visitor lands on your site through high page ranks. Disadvantages of SEM include “costly pay-per-click advertising, a highly saturated competitive market, bias toward larger brands, click fraud, and limited reach”7, costly fees to procure a company that specialize in SEO/SEM, and results, if any, generally take time.
BLOG METRICS To measure analytics for a blog, some other tools that may be used include traffic volume, which refers to how much traffic is generated by your blog. Traffic can be further broken down into new versus returning visitors, from which loyal customers and the growth
Mugacha Betty 6
rate of readers can be determined.
Knowing the number of lost
readers and the rate/period of departure can also be a way to measure a blog’s success. Another tool that can be implemented is the number of comments left by different visitors, which could further be divided into positive and negative feedback.
This information may provide
insight as to whether the author’s writing content is in line with what readers are looking for or if adjustments need to be made. If a blog should contain advertisements, revenue generated through these ads or click data can also be used as a metric. Inclusion of favicons on blogs that allows users to vote on success, such as Digg.com, can also be another tool implement on blogs to measure success. So in an attempt to make my course blog more attractive, I referenced an article by Michael Martin which lists structure, balance, color, emphasis & clarity, uniqueness and functionality as the seven elements necessary to make a blog more attractive8. For structure, I chose a template with dynamic grids built into it. Content was moved around to ensure that it was well organized. To ensure that my blog site was well balanced, and to add a unique element, I moved my blog roll (which contains my class mates’ blogs) to the left of the main content and customized it with html, such that it would not just be a list that goes on and on to the bottom of the page but integrates well with the main content.
An animated image was also embedded to
make the web site easy on the eyes. Its size was kept small so as not
Mugacha Betty 7
cause a distraction.
To increase functionality, hyperlinks associated
with content were created so facilitate interaction with the user. For background color, a turquoise green was used in the hope of evoking a tranquil, relaxing mindset.
No advertisements were incorporated in
the blog as these were perceived as a distraction that would repeal visitors. Feedburner, an application tool by Google Inc., was installed as a measure to help generate more traffic for my blog. Feedburner helps “websites large and small to distribute their content well beyond just visitors using browsers. Feeds permit subscription to regular updates, delivered automatically via a web portal, news reader, or in some cases good old email”9. Google Analytics was used to monitor and track traffic as well as gather statistics.
Details of information
captured include number of visitors within a given time period, site usage that details the number of visits, how many pages were viewed per visit, average time on the blog, and bounce rate (the percentage of visitors who did not click on any links).
This measure is somewhat
skewed as a visitor who arrives at my blog and only reads the material without clicking on any links would be included as part of the bounce rate, when in actual fact, they did visit and make use of the site. Other metrics include the types of visitors broken down into new and returning visitors, which can be further drilled down to date ranges, geographical regions from which my blog was accessed, how much traffic was as a result of referring sites versus search engine find, what
Mugacha Betty 8
browser was used to generate the traffic and which pages/links were viewed or visited the most. Below are some captured screenshots of data gathered from Google Analytics Report: 1. Dashboard:
2. Content Overview: Mugacha Betty 9
3. Traffic Sources Overview:
Research into web analytics and website improvement expanded my knowledge about these fields of IT. I was intrigued by tools and technologies available to website owners to aid in data mining of
Mugacha Betty 10
website content and make pages stand out.
The jury is still out
regarding the impact of the changes I implemented.
Best case
scenario, I will have more readers on my blog than I know what to do with and worst case scenario, status quo stays and for now, that is alright by me.
Mugacha Betty 11
Works Cited: 1. Peterson, Eric T. "What is Web Analytics". O'Reilly Media Inc. 14 October 2009.< http://www.xml.com/pub/a/2005/10/12/what-is-webanalytics.html > 2. September 2009. Forrester Consulting Group. Appraising Your Investment In Enterprise Web Analytics Forrester group. N.p.: n.p., 2009. Web. 14 Oct. 2009 5. "Search Engine Marketing Glossary". GetOn.com Technologies Inc. 14 October 2009 6. "Search engine optimization." Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. 14 Oct 2009, 01:47 UTC. 15 Oct 2009 7. Chaffey, Dave. "Advantages and disadvantages of paid search marketing." Web. 14 Oct. 2009. <
Mugacha Betty 12
http://www.davechaffey.com/guides/paid-search-marketingstrategy-guide/advantages-disadvantages > 8. Martin Michael. “7 Elements to Make Your Blog Look Great.” Web. 14 Oct. 2009.< http://www.problogdesign.com/design/7elements-to-make-your-blog-look-great/> 9. Google. “Feed Burner Help”. Web. 14 Oct. 2009.
Mugacha Betty 13
WEB ANALYTICS Web analytics is the process of collecting “data about the activities of people accessing your website (visitors)--how they found you, when they visited, what pages they looked at, what they bought or downloaded, and so on--and mining that data for information that can be used to improve a website”1. The type of data that is gathered includes information about how a visitor navigates pages or sections of a web page, click and conversion rates, data regarding utility of different sections of a page which can then identify sections in need of improvement or re-designing. What all this information does is help a website owner identify strengths and weaknesses of the website, identify trends, and with this information, enable them to maximize their return on investment. Data collection is normally done through embedding of code on a web page. As the visitor navigates the page using the mouse, relevant data is tracked and reported to the website owner. A recent report by the Forrester group states that web analytics will help companies derive greater insight from their data, aid in gaining a competitive advantage by having more dynamic and targeted content, and through the evidence of past performance, help companies develop more effective online programs2. MAKING YOUR WEBSITE STAND OUT
Mugacha Betty 2
A website, whether personal or business oriented, is an entrance into one’s space on the internet - an invitation to outsiders to come in and stay a while. For businesses, it is a place to lure customers into making purchases and even more than that, satisfy them and make them loyal. The same goes for personal web sites such as blogs. A successful blog will have many followers who repeatedly visit and read what the author has to say. It is therefore important for websites to have high eyeball appeal. When visitors navigate to a website, they need to know how things are organized and where to find what. An efficient and easy to use sitemap is important as it helps show where product/information is located and provide ways to get there. Content is another key factor. A website author needs to deliver specifically what clients need – be it information or products. There is no point in having a web site that does not afford customers what they are looking for. As Simon Cowes puts it, for a website stand out, a designer needs to pay attention to the website’s “audience, objective, layout, navigation, content and imagery...” 3. Knowing who your clients are enables you to customize an interface that caters to them.
For example a fashion house
designing an online store front targeted at teen girls might choose to use damask patterns, color palettes that stay in the purple/pink family, and whimsical fonts since this type of design appeals to girls in that age group. Another example may be a mother blogging about post-
Mugacha Betty 3
partum depression, who, in the process of capturing her audience with personal life stories might incorporate ads for treatment drugs or information regarding where and how to find support. Attention to the architecture, layout and design of a website is also important. Positioning of elements such as text, images, containers, decisions as to which fonts, sizes, and colors also determine if a website stands out.
Take color for instance: Color is
one design attribute that gives visitors a first impression regarding what the website is all about. Studies have shown that color has a huge impact on emotion, moods and behavior so using the right combination of color(s) can create harmony and greatly help attract and retain visitors, or on the flip side, if used incorrectly, can distract from content and repeal visitors. SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION (SEO) & SEARCH ENGINE MARKETING (SEM) Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the “process of choosing targeted keyword phrases related to a site, and ensuring that the site places well when those keyword phrases are part of a Web search” 4. Search Engine Marketing (SEM) is “the process of marketing a web site on search engines, including search engine optimization, submitting your site to the search engines and directories for organic listings, pay per inclusion, pay-per-click, banner ads or any other marketing programs offered by search engines. 5”
HTML contains elements
Mugacha Betty 4
known as Meta tags that allow users to describe the web page content, list key words among other details. Meta tags play a role in SEO in that some tag elements, such as keywords, were designed so that search engine crawlers would find your website through keywords defined in the html meta tag. However, major search engines have lessened the impact of meta tags on their page rankings algorithms or discontinued meta-tag use altogether as in the case of Google due to websites that practiced deliberate insertion of misleading keywords with intent to boost page rankings. The impacts of SEO/SEM on making a website stand out are not clear cut.
While SEO can increase page rankings and possibly rank
very highly, keywords placed in meta tags on sites that do not necessarily contain related content, or having too many keywords (known as keyword stuffing) is a practice that is frowned upon by search engines and can result in having a website banned from search engine indexes. A practice known as ‘spamdexing’ or ‘black-hat SEO’ “attempts to improve rankings in ways that are disapproved of by the search engines, or involve deception. One black hat technique uses text that is hidden, either as text colored similar to the background, in an invisible div, or positioned off screen. Another method gives a different page depending on whether the page is being requested by a human visitor or a search engine, a technique known as cloaking.”6 Dependence on SEO/SEM as a marketing tool might be detrimental to a
Mugacha Betty 5
site since search engines change their algorithms constantly and there is no guarantee of rank should the site be removed or fall in page rank as in the case of Kinderstart who sued Google for removing their name from their search index. This resulted in a loss of about 70% of traffic to their site. 6 Advantages of SEM include helping a company “reach a targeted audience, can have branding effects even in the absence of clickthroughs, and has a higher conversion when compared to SEO”7. Other benefits include no limit to your reach, because the higher your page rankings, the more people are looking at your site which may generate more traffic and business, and that search engines do not charge you every time a visitor lands on your site through high page ranks. Disadvantages of SEM include “costly pay-per-click advertising, a highly saturated competitive market, bias toward larger brands, click fraud, and limited reach”7, costly fees to procure a company that specialize in SEO/SEM, and results, if any, generally take time.
BLOG METRICS To measure analytics for a blog, some other tools that may be used include traffic volume, which refers to how much traffic is generated by your blog. Traffic can be further broken down into new versus returning visitors, from which loyal customers and the growth
Mugacha Betty 6
rate of readers can be determined.
Knowing the number of lost
readers and the rate/period of departure can also be a way to measure a blog’s success. Another tool that can be implemented is the number of comments left by different visitors, which could further be divided into positive and negative feedback.
This information may provide
insight as to whether the author’s writing content is in line with what readers are looking for or if adjustments need to be made. If a blog should contain advertisements, revenue generated through these ads or click data can also be used as a metric. Inclusion of favicons on blogs that allows users to vote on success, such as Digg.com, can also be another tool implement on blogs to measure success. So in an attempt to make my course blog more attractive, I referenced an article by Michael Martin which lists structure, balance, color, emphasis & clarity, uniqueness and functionality as the seven elements necessary to make a blog more attractive8. For structure, I chose a template with dynamic grids built into it. Content was moved around to ensure that it was well organized. To ensure that my blog site was well balanced, and to add a unique element, I moved my blog roll (which contains my class mates’ blogs) to the left of the main content and customized it with html, such that it would not just be a list that goes on and on to the bottom of the page but integrates well with the main content.
An animated image was also embedded to
make the web site easy on the eyes. Its size was kept small so as not
Mugacha Betty 7
cause a distraction.
To increase functionality, hyperlinks associated
with content were created so facilitate interaction with the user. For background color, a turquoise green was used in the hope of evoking a tranquil, relaxing mindset.
No advertisements were incorporated in
the blog as these were perceived as a distraction that would repeal visitors. Feedburner, an application tool by Google Inc., was installed as a measure to help generate more traffic for my blog. Feedburner helps “websites large and small to distribute their content well beyond just visitors using browsers. Feeds permit subscription to regular updates, delivered automatically via a web portal, news reader, or in some cases good old email”9. Google Analytics was used to monitor and track traffic as well as gather statistics.
Details of information
captured include number of visitors within a given time period, site usage that details the number of visits, how many pages were viewed per visit, average time on the blog, and bounce rate (the percentage of visitors who did not click on any links).
This measure is somewhat
skewed as a visitor who arrives at my blog and only reads the material without clicking on any links would be included as part of the bounce rate, when in actual fact, they did visit and make use of the site. Other metrics include the types of visitors broken down into new and returning visitors, which can be further drilled down to date ranges, geographical regions from which my blog was accessed, how much traffic was as a result of referring sites versus search engine find, what
Mugacha Betty 8
browser was used to generate the traffic and which pages/links were viewed or visited the most. Below are some captured screenshots of data gathered from Google Analytics Report: 1. Dashboard:
2. Content Overview: Mugacha Betty 9
3. Traffic Sources Overview:
Research into web analytics and website improvement expanded my knowledge about these fields of IT. I was intrigued by tools and technologies available to website owners to aid in data mining of
Mugacha Betty 10
website content and make pages stand out.
The jury is still out
regarding the impact of the changes I implemented.
Best case
scenario, I will have more readers on my blog than I know what to do with and worst case scenario, status quo stays and for now, that is alright by me.
Mugacha Betty 11
Works Cited: 1. Peterson, Eric T. "What is Web Analytics". O'Reilly Media Inc. 14 October 2009.< http://www.xml.com/pub/a/2005/10/12/what-is-webanalytics.html > 2. September 2009. Forrester Consulting Group. Appraising Your Investment In Enterprise Web Analytics Forrester group. N.p.: n.p., 2009. Web. 14 Oct. 2009
Mugacha Betty 12
http://www.davechaffey.com/guides/paid-search-marketingstrategy-guide/advantages-disadvantages > 8. Martin Michael. “7 Elements to Make Your Blog Look Great.” Web. 14 Oct. 2009.< http://www.problogdesign.com/design/7elements-to-make-your-blog-look-great/> 9. Google. “Feed Burner Help”. Web. 14 Oct. 2009.
Mugacha Betty 13
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