Vol. 3 :: No. 11 November, 2001 (Kartik-Mangsir)

Marketing

Analyzing Website Traffic

Most of us are aware of Hit Counter-the small counter which is usually placed at the bottom of the web page that runs like a meter with its number increasing every time someone visits the page. This is the most common way of analyzing the traffic to a particular site. Every time a visitor comes to a web page, an additional hit is recorded and you also get one for every image or script that is executed too. The number of hits to a site thus indicates how many have seen the particular site. While ‘hits’ is a nice thing to know, it doesn’t give you the complete picture about the traffic that a website receives. It doesn’t tell you where they came from, what browsers they were using, what keywords did they use for a search engine to visit your site etc. Tracking the information about the visitors to your site however is important if you want to learn what improvements in your site could work so that people keep coming back to your site.

Why analyze the traffic?

Understanding who are accessing your website-as well as why and how and where – goes a long way toward helping you develop better content and expand your audience. Gathering information about the web site visitors lets you adjust you site’s content, design, style, product line and features to capture the potential audience. For example, web traffic analysis of an entertainment site might reveal that most of the visitors to the web site are teenagers looking for reviews of the latest movies. This knowledge might lead the Webmaster to allocate resources to the movie review section of the site. At the same time if he can show that the section gets the visits from the potential moviegoers it will be much easier to convince the movie producers to advertise within that section. Similarly if he knows that his site is popular with moviegoers for Nepali movies and not Hindi movies, he can market his site to the appropriate niche audience. Information on the traffic to a site is also crucial to estimate the cost of hiring and outsourcing the products and services needed to develop and maintain the technical architecture of the site. After all the cost of the equipment and services—servers and hardware, routers, software etc. need to justify the traffic that the site generates.

The most popular way to analyze the traffic is through the web logs generated by your host’s server every time someone requests a file on your site These logs contain important information such as the users host or IP address, the file they requested and at what time and what URL they were last at. Web analyzing software can generate reports from this information to display to you this information about your website. Some of the popular softwares are Webtrends ( www.webtrends.com), Accessprobe (www.accessprobe.com), wwwstats (www.ics.uci.edu/pub/websoft/wwwstat/), Linktrakker, Faststats, Website Reporter, net.Genesis (www.netgen.com), Andromedia (www.andromedia.com). Most of these softwares create very nice looking graphs and tables, and a very nice interface to a deep analysis of the logs, with useful statistics, including referrer analysis. Some like Stat*X monitors activity on your web site down to how many users visit a site, how often, and how long they stay, along with extensive demographics on those users. Statistics are accompanied by large-sized trend graphs. Some of these softwares even come free of cost. However those that are not free too can also be availed from the web hosting companies in the valley for as less as Nrs. 2500.00.

If you don’t have web logs or do not want to set up the software to analyze them, another option is to use an outside tracking service. Most of these come in the form of free statistics in exchange for placing a small button or advertisement on each page you’d like to track. A disadvantage to using these is that nothing is tracked if the button doesn’t load, if for example a visitor hits the stop button or leaves the page before its finishes loading. Some of the good free stats services are www.webtrendslive.com, www.hitbox.com, www.thecounter.com, www.webstat.com.

The choice for the web analyzing product or service would depend on what details are important for you so that you can narrow down thee available product or service to find out one that works for you. Once you’ve set up some type of tracking program you can see the data you get to improve your site, promote it and earn revenue from it. Regardless of which analyzer you choose, the basic information is the same. Here are the main statistics you should be aware of:

a.Unique Visitors/Sessions

A unique visit is a single computer connecting to your Web site. While each visitor may view several pages of the website, they will only register once as unique (usually per 24 hour period).

b.Page views

The amount of web pages on your site that were visited. Unlike hits images are not included. A single visit may generate a certain number of page views, so by dividing the number of page views by unique visits you can approximate how many pages of your site each person requests.. Divide Page Views by Sessions. Usually if the result (page views/unique visits) is 3-4, it's safe to say your visitors are interested in your site. If its closer to 1, this means they are flying away at the first page. Consider major redesign. Similarly if you have a good amount of page views, you'll be able to sell ads deep into your site.

c.Referrer Link

Each time someone visits a page of any site, their browser sends a referrer, which allows you to track where they arrived at your site from. This can be used to analyze which sites are sending visitors your way, allowing you to track the effectiveness of promotion or advertising. Good analyzers will also give information on which keyword the visitors used to find the website in the search engine. You can target your marketing campaigns to the best referrers. Monitor your referrer links. This will save your advertising costs.

d. Browser, Resolution, OS

This information can be useful in determining what screen resolution, operating system, and browser version most of your visits are using to better serve them. If a majority of your traffic is running at 640x480 resolution you wouldn't want to create Web pages 800 pixels wide.

e.Most Popular Pages

These are the most frequently viewed files within your site. These are also the pages that you would use to drive traffic to other less used sections of your site that you wish to draw attention to. These numbers are also the ones the advertisers will want to see to ensure that they're not being placed in the "back corner" of your website.

f.Most Popular Entry Pages These are the pages where people are first coming into your site. This can occur either from the users typing in the URL directly, from a bookmark file, a search engine or a cross-link from another site.

g.Most Popular Exit Pages

These are the pages that users last viewed before leaving your site. These are a good indication of which pages may need some changes in order to keep people within your site.

h. Most Popular Single-Visit Pages

These are the files that people are entering your site to view and leaving without visiting elsewhere. Chances are that the users have viewed the site and left immediately for one of the following reasons:

1. They were looking for specific information and found it/did not find it (usually from a search engine)
2. The page they entered did not appeal enough to them to continue to visit

Take a look at the single-page visits to determine what can be done to encourage further exploration of your site. i. Visitors Origins

This is usually the list of countries people are visiting from. Depending on the types of services and / or products you offer, you may want to consider keeping your international visitors in mind when updating your site.

Well, those are the most common logfile elements, though by no means are they the only ones. Depending on the log analyzer, one can manipulate the display to show literally hundreds of combinations of the data and their patterns/trends

By understanding how people use your site can help you and your sales and marketing team generate more traffic. If you know what types of users the Web is made of you can redefine and adapt your site’s design and marketing techniques accordingly you can deliver a better experience for your visitors to your site. And that’s the best way to keep people coming back to your site.

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