liminate guesswork and of specific groups of visitors
measure success - that is such as purchasers, those who
what analysing your website came from Google etc. and robot
visitors' behaviour [or web reports which monitor when search
analytics] is all about. engine spiders index your site
Understanding where they came
from, where they land and what There are free packages you can
people are doing on your site. use from ClickTracks or Google
but you must apply to Google and
Virtually all web-hosting it can take weeks for them to set
services provide rudimentary you up whereas ClickTracks
analytics that can help you begin Appetizer is free, immediate and
to understand what users are includes several of ClickTracks'
doing on your site. But most most popular features like
hosting services just don't overlay view, path view, page
provide more sophisticated tools. analysis and basic visitor
Tools such as funnel reports, labeling.
which show how visitors are
progressing through the various But once you have a web analytics
stages or levels of your site - tool what do you do with it? To
hopefully to become a lead / many people statistics can be
conversion / sale or navigation daunting and interpreting what
reports which give you visitor they mean can be painful; but
activity such as entry points; hey, no pain, no gain.
where they clicked; where they
came from; where they went; how The first thing you need to
much time they spent on a page understand is some basic terms:
and their exit points. Then there
are tools such as segmentation Hit: a request for a file from
reports which track the behaviour your web server noted in the log.
Page view: a request for a file New visitor: a visitor that has
whose type is defined as a page not made any previous visits.
in log analysis or an occurrence
of the page tagging script being Referring search terms: the
run in page tagging. In log search phrases people are using
analysis, a single page view may to find your site.
generate multiple hits as all the
resources required to view the Referring URLs: tell you which
page (images, .js and .css files) web sites are sending you
are also requested from your web traffic.
server.
Content popularity: the list of
Visitor session: a series of most popular pages on your site.
requests from the same unique
visitor with in a single visit. A Site overlay: displays your
visit is expected to contain actual pages with a click level
multiple hits (in log analysis) indicator next to each link
and page views. showing the number of people who
click on each link.
Unique visitor: the uniquely
identified client generating Bounce rate: reveals the number
requests on your web server (log of visitors who left the site
analysis) or viewing pages (page from a particular page.
tagging). A unique visitor can,
of course, make many visits. OK most of those are obvious but
they are still worth laying out.
Repeat visitor: a visitor that In future articles I'll expand on
has made at least one previous some of these terms and on the
visit. whole subject.
About the Author:
Richard Hill is a Director of E-CRM Solutions, that specialises in CRM, direct and internet marketing [http://www.e-crm.co.uk] for SMEs. He is non-executive Chairman of Innovantage [http://www.innovantage.co.uk] a business intelligence company and a non-executive director of Innovecom [http://www.innovecom.com] a computer networking company.
Read more articles by:
Richard D S Hill
Article Source: www.iSnare.com
