Web Analytics: An Overview

Gaskins 1 Sarah Gaskins Dr. Craig Piercy MIST 7500 October 15, 2009 Web Analytics: An Overview According to the Web Analytics Association, web analytics is the measurement, collection, analysis and reporting of Internet data for the purposes of understanding and optimizing Web usage. Divided into two main categories, on-site and off-site, web analytics is a tool designed to enable web developers and web site owners (including blogs) learn enough about the performance of a web site and its visitors to understand how to increase web traffic and ultimately increase sales and revenue. In recent years, web analytics has become an increasingly popular component to the method of improving a web site or blog's overall performance and optimizing its success as measured by target response. The first main category of web analytics is called on-site web analytics because it tracks and measures a visitor's progress once he or she is on a specific web site. The second category is called offsite web analytics because it measures a web site's potential, regardless of whether a visitor is or has been on a site. Measurements of on-site and off-site web analytics vary and are both useful tactics, however, the on-site side of web analytics has generally been the most used in that it compares gathered data against key performance indicators in order to improve a web site's effectiveness. Off-site analytics simply measures a site's potential to succeed according to what is happening, comprehensively, across the Internet itself. Further, there are two approaches to on-site analytics: logfile analysis and page tagging. A basic summary of differences between these two approaches would be 1) Logfile Analysis: Web servers record data on a logfile which is in turn available for data analysis providing information on a web site's popularity; 2) Page tagging: This method was commonly seen in the form of web counters in the

Gaskins 2 early years of the Internet, and it runs a small JavaScript code within the web browser each time a page is requested, then sends the data to a remote server to be processed and display activity statistics for that web site. A multitude of companies provide on-site web analytics services and software, including companies such as Webtrends, Inc., Omniture, Inc., and Coremetrics, Inc., and services such as Google Analytics, Yahoo! Analytics, and Piwik, an open source, downloadable software program. In order to comprehend and utilize these services to their fullest potential, users must first understand some basic definitions of commonly used terms regarding web analytics. As industry leaders work to lock in a globally standard list of web analytics terminology, there has been some ambiguity and confusion over what many definitions actually mean for quite some time. For better understanding throughout this document, here I will list some important, commonly used (and confused) web analytics terms as defined by Wikipedia. Common Web Analytics Terms •

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Hit - A request for a file from the web server. Available only in log analysis. The number of hits received by a website is frequently cited to assert its popularity, but this number is extremely misleading and dramatically over-estimates popularity. A single web-page typically consists of multiple (often dozens) of discrete files, each of which is counted as a hit as the page is downloaded, so the number of hits is really an arbitrary number more reflective of the complexity of individual pages on the website than the website's actual popularity. The total number of visitors or page views provides a more realistic and accurate assessment of popularity. Page View - A request for a file whose type is defined as a page in log analysis. An occurrence of the script being run in page tagging. In log analysis, a single page view may generate multiple hits as all the resources required to view the page (images, .js and .css files) are also requested from the web server. Visit / Session - A series of requests from the same uniquely identified client with a set timeout, often 30 minutes. A visit contains one or more page views. First Visit / First Session - A visit from a visitor who has not made any previous visits. Visitor / Unique Visitor / Unique User - The uniquely identified client generating requests on the web server (log analysis) or viewing pages (page tagging) within a defined time period (i.e. day, week or month). A Unique Visitor counts once within the timescale. A visitor can make multiple visits. Identification is made to the visitor's computer, not the person, usually via cookie and/or IP+User Agent. Thus the same

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person visiting from two different computers will count as two Unique Visitors. Repeat Visitor - A visitor that has made at least one previous visit. The period between the last and current visit is called visitor recency and is measured in days. New Visitor - A visitor that has not made any previous visits. This definition creates a certain amount of confusion (see common confusions below), and is sometimes substituted with analysis of first visits. Impression - An impression is each time an advertisement loads on a user's screen. Anytime you see a banner, that is an impression. Singletons - The number of visits where only a single page is viewed. While not a useful metric in and of itself the number of singletons is indicative of various forms of Click fraud as well as being used to calculate bounce rate and in some cases to identify automatons bots). Bounce Rate - The percentage of visits where the visitor enters and exits at the same page without visiting any other pages on the site in between. % Exit - The percentage of users who exit from a page. Visibility time - The time a single page (or a blog, Ad Banner...) is viewed. Session Duration - Average amount of time that visitors spend on the site each time they visit. This metric can be complicated because the length of the final page view can not be measured. Page View Duration / Time on Page - Average amount of time that visitors spend on each page of the site. As with Session Duration, this metric is complicated by the fact that analytics programs can not measure the length of the final page view. Page Depth / Page Views per Session - Page Depth is the average number of page views a visitor consumes before ending their session. It is calculated by dividing total number of page views by total number of sessions and is also called Page Views per Session or PV/Session. Frequency / Session per Unique - Frequency measures how often visitors come to a website. It is calculated by dividing the total number of sessions (or visits) by the total number of unique visitors. Sometimes it is used to measure the loyalty of your audience. Click Path - The sequence of hyperlinks one or more website visitors follows on a given site. Click - Refers to a single instance of a user following a hyperlink from one page in a site to another.

As a web site and blog owner, I have plenty of options to choose from such as those previously mentioned to analyze my web site traffic and visitor habits. As a WordPress user, I am able to use a Google Analytics plugin called Google Analytics for WordPress, which I can easily install using my blog's control panel to track activity. However, before I analyze any data I must have activity on my site, and in order to have activity, I must attract visitors somehow.

Gaskins 4 Along with owning or developing a web site comes the task to draw visitors to that site for varied purposes of increased sales and revenue, exposure for events, and more. Although aesthetics are very important, web site attractiveness does not apply solely to visual appearance and design. Apart from a beautiful, creative design, one very useful method is called search engine optimization, or SEO, which is a component of search engine marketing, or SEM. The two terms SEO and SEM are easily and commonly confused but do, in deed, different meanings. Wikipedia defines search engine optimization as “the process of improving the volume or quality of traffic to a web site from search engines via "natural" or unpaid ("organic" or "algorithmic") search results as opposed to search engine marketing (SEM) which deals with paid inclusion.” Wikipedia defines search engine marketing as “a form of Internet marketing that seeks to promote websites by increasing their visibility in search engine result pages (SERPs) through the use of paid placement, contextual advertising, and paid inclusion.” The main difference is that SEO is an unpaid approach to attracting visitors, and SEM utilizes advertising and other paid methods. I am most familiar with search engine optimization as it is the most cost-effective method for improving search results and increasing web traffic. I also understand that, while SEM is an extremely useful method, it is not always necessary to spend money in order to attract visitors to a web site. In my experience as a web developer, I've found that there are several proven SEO tactics a developer can use to improve a site's search engine rankings and credibility, not immediately but over a span of a few days to a few weeks. Here are five steps that cost no money and work to improve a web site's credibility: 1. Use many strong, relevant keywords in live text throughout the web site. Sites that use irrelevant keywords in efforts to draw more visitors may be penalized. According to Google's Webmaster Guidelines, this is one illicit practice that “may lead to a site being removed entirely

Gaskins 5 from the Google index or otherwise penalized. If a site has been penalized, it may no longer show up in results on Google.com or on any of Google's partner sites.” 2. Update fresh content to the web site continually, and if possible, daily. If users begin to expect new content on your web site, and to trust that your web site will, in fact, have new and accurate information when they visit, they are more likely to return on a regular basis. 3. Don't trick users, and don't make them think. First of all, misleading and irrelevant content, as mentioned above in #1, is punishable and may lead to a severe penalty. However, making it as easy as possible for visitors to get around your site — and giving them the information they came for — is praised. The book “Don't Make Me Think,” by Steve Krug, exemplifies this perfectly by listing just a few things that increase goodwill. From the consumer's perspective, Krug says, “The good news is that even if you make mistakes, it's possible to restore my goodwill by doing things that convince me that you do have my interest at heart.” He goes on to list the following suggestions: •

Know the main things that people want to do on your site, and make them obvious and easy.

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Tell me what I want to know.

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Save me steps wherever you can.

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Put effort into it.

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Know what questions I'm likely to have, and answer them. Frequently Asked Questions lists are enormously valuable.

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Provide me with creature comforts like printer-friendly pages.

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Make it easy to recover from errors.

4. Include a site map on your web site and submit it to Google. This not only provides a go-to directory for visitors if they happen to get lost on your site, but it also helps Google increase their coverage of your web site.

Gaskins 6 5. Don't be lazy. Check for broken links, open html tags, and sloppy code in general. Use live text whenever possible, especially for headings, and always include ALT tags with images. I have worked to ensure that every web site I develop follows at least the five guidelines listed above. Since I have recently begun a blog within the past two months (first post on August 23, 2009) and have applied Google Analytics for WordPress to track its web traffic, I will focus now on some techniques I used in an effort to draw traffic to my blog and increase visits. I will analyze my traffic and visitors' statistics for the period of September 15 – October 14, 2009. On Friday, September 18, 2009, I made the first small effort to draw visitors to my blog by sending an email to my family informing them that I am now a blogger and would be updating the site with new posts frequently. I was able to see through Google Analytics that, on Monday, September 21, 2009 there were 11 visitors to my web site. Since I had not been doing (nor have I done since) anything to try to draw visitors to my web site, this was a drastic jump from the typical daily average of 0 visitors per day.

Figure 1-1

Gaskins 7 As you can see in Figure 1-1, above, this line graph is sorted by day, so I am able to compare each day's traffic in the same chart. Google Analytics also provides a pie chart depicting an overview of traffic sources and a content overview showing traffic on specific pages of my web site, shown below in Figure 1-2.

Figure 1-2

There is also a very helpful chart showing site usage, below in Figure 1-3, including how many visitors there were on the web site in a specified date range, how many total page views there were, and how many pages per visit users viewed. It also shows the bounce rate, average time users spent on the site, and the percentage of new visits there were to the site in the specified date range.

Figure 1-3

Gaskins 8 The second attempt I made to attract visitors to my web site was on the morning of Wednesday, October 14, 2009 when I posted a link to my Facebook page. On October 12 and October 13, there was one visit per day. However, in the span of about eight hours after I posted a link to my Facebook page on October 14, there were 14 visits (12 unique visitors) and 27 page views. See Figure 2 below. Figure 2

Gaskins 9 As you see in Figure 2, there are also useful map overlays if one is interested in where a web site's users are located. These charts shown above are all centrally located on the Google Analytics dashboard, or home screen. There are many more informative charts, graphs and statistics beyond the dashboard with very detailed information about visitors, traffic sources, content, and even browser usage. The segmentation options are very helpful in breaking down profiles of browsers and visitors into sections such as connection speed, operating systems, screen resolutions and more. The power that lies within search engine optimization, search engine marketing, and web analytics tools is tremendous, and there are plentiful opportunities to learn about web sites and their visitors by utilizing these helpful techniques, services and software. It is not only vital to adhere to search engine's guidelines in order to gain desired results and stay off of blacklists, but it is also extremely important to put effort into making a site attractive to visitors, visually and within the code, so they will return. Once you have traffic and visitors to observe, web analytics can give you insight you need to please them, keep them coming back, and increase the overall success of your web site's purpose.

Gaskins 10 Works Cited "About Web Analytics Association." The Web Analytics Association - Web Analytics Association, n.d. Web. 12 Oct. 2009. . Krug, Steve. Don't Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability, 2nd Edition. 2nd ed. New York: New Riders, 2005. Print. "Search engine marketing." Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, n.d. Web. 11 Oct. 2009. . "Search engine optimization." Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, n.d. Web. 11 Oct. 2009. . "Web analytics." Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, n.d. Web. 10 Oct. 2009. . "Webmaster guidelines - Webmasters/Site owners Help." Google, n.d. Web. 12 Oct. 2009. .