Web stats. Site
statistics. Don't run away... you need to read this!
The very thought of deciphering site statistic programs
sends many site owners running to do all kinds of tasks
that are less painful and tedious, like going to the
dentist or cleaning the tile grout with a toothbrush.
If you know what you are looking for, site stats are
not that painful and can be a real motivator to improve
performance. They are the scoreboard that allows you
to benchmark your performance and challenge you to find
ways to make your site convert at a higher rate; more
sales, more signups, more participation.
Let's review some of the basic terminology you will
find in most web analytics program and demystify it
so that you know what to measure, what to ignore, and
what it all means.
Hits
Hits are the most overused and misunderstood measurement
in web analytics. In the early days, people would brag
about how many hits their website got... today most
people know that hits are not a reliable measurement.
A hit is any element called by your browser when it
requests a page. A single page may register a single
hit or hundreds of hits based on how it has been built.
Images, external style sheets, external java scripts,
and other elements that require the server
to pull a file to build the page register as hits. Since
every page has a different number of elements, hits
are not a reliable measurement.
Files
A file is a hit that actually returned data from the
server. Not all hits return data. Cached elements and
errors are examples of hits that are not counted as
files. This measurement is not likely to be helpful
to you either.
Pages or Page Views
A Page or Page View is a measurement of the pages requested
from the server. This is a good measurement to keep
up with. You can get a rough idea of the number of pages
the average visitor views by dividing this number by
the number of visitors.
Page views can give you an idea of whether or not visitors
are finding what they need on your site and progressing
through it or viewing a single page and leaving.
Sites, Unique Visitors, and Repeat Visitors
Sites and unique visitors increment your visitors by
recording their IP address. This gives you an idea of
the number of visitors to your site in a given time
period. It's not entirely accurate as people visiting
your site from the same IP address (such as people on
an office network or on dial-up where IP's rotate) will
be counted as a single site or visitor.
Repeat visitors simply takes that IP address and compares
it to see if the same IP address has visited more than
once. Again, a margin of error for multiple users on
the same IP address will skew this number.
Session and Visit Duration
This metric tries to measure the amount of time a user
browsed your site. While it seems like a good idea to
measure this, it's not a very accurate measurement.
People may not be actively browsing your site, but they
may have it open. A visit may "time out" at different
intervals, and a new session is started for the same
visitor.
One thing to note would be a large number of very short
visits; it may indicate your search terms are not very
well targeted and people are not finding what they expect
on your site.
Referrers or Referring Sites
The link a visitor clicked on to arrive at your site
is counted as a referrer or referring site. A large
number of your referrers will be internal pages, the
rest will be other sites or search engines. You may
also see some web-based e-mail programs in your
referrer logs. Bookmarked pages and urls typed directly
into the browser will not show a referrer.
Referring sites is definitely something you want to
watch- you can tell who is linking to you and how much
traffic they send, including the search engines. When
checking referring sites, don't click the URL in your
web analytics program... copy and paste it into a new
browser window. Otherwise your stats page will then
appear in their referring sites!
Search Terms and Search Strings
Search terms and search strings are pulled from the
referring URL from traffic sent by search engines. Search
strings are more useful than search terms...just because
a single words are listed in the search terms does not
mean a visitor found your site by
typing in that one word. It's simply every word in the
search strings listed separately.
Search strings can tell you a lot about your search
engine traffic- Are there phrases there you didn't expect?
What phrases that you did expect are missing?
Browsers, User Agents, and Operating Systems
Browsers or user agents and operating systems will tell
you what type of browser and operating system your visitors
are using, often detailing it to the version number.
You may want to double-check to see how your pages render
in the browsers your
visitors are using. Don't get lulled into a false sense
of security by a small percentage of users for a specific
browser... translate that percentage into actual numbers.
You may want to check again for browser compatibility!
This information will typically show you the search
engine robots traffic as well; you can see how often
they are visiting your site and how many pages they
are viewing.
Entry and Exit Pages
This is an interesting metric- it details the top entry
pages (the first page a visitor arrives at) and the
top exit pages (the last page they view before leaving
or timing out). This can help you identify the high
interest pages and the pages where you are
losing visitors.
If you can combine this metric with top pages viewed,
you can get an idea of how people are progressing through
your site.
The Basics
There are many, many things a web analytics package
can tell you these days that are truly amazing. once
you grasp the basics of these measurements that are
included in any web analytics software, you will understand
better what you want to measure and
why. Then it's time to trade up to a full-featured package
that can give you that finely detailed information in
the way you want to see it.
Most hosts these days have free web analytics programs
installed - check your control panel for your sites
and see. It's probably labeled as "web stats" or "statistics".
The most popular ones are Webalizer, Analog, and AWStats.
If you don't have a web analytics program installed
but you do have access to your raw logfiles, try Funnel
Web (http://www.funnelwebcentral.com/),
a free log analyzer.
If you don't have built-in stats or access to your logfiles,
get a new host! You really do need to review this information
monthly or quarterly to see how your site is doing with
traffic and visitors. Put it on your calendar now- start
benchmarking! You need to know the score.
By:
Hamoon Arbabi
Source: http://homebusiness.nexuswebs.net/ |
