[aageneral] Web Analytics - More Than Just Numbers

Article: Web Analytics - More Than Just Numbers

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WEB ANALYTICS - MORE THAN JUST NUMBERS

By Stephen Oachs, VisiStat.com
Copyright 2005
1001 words

UNDERSTANDING YOUR USER'S WEB SITE EXPERIENCE

According to WikiPedia.org, Web Analytics is defined as,
"the monitoring and reporting of Web site usage so
businesses can better understand the complex interactions
between Web visitor actions and Web site offers, as well
as leverage that insight for increased customer loyalty
and sales." By tracking movement and monitoring the path
and activity of site users, Web analytic tools provide
valuable information about individual user behavior. This
data provides you with important insights based on
watching user movements within your website. You will
be able to track how users navigate through your site,
which pages are most frequented, where users exit your
site and any number of other behavioral traits.

Visitor traffic statistics can tell you much more than
how many customers visited your site on a given day.
A good Web analytics service will provide you with the
ability to slice-and-dice your visitor reports so that
you can readily identify peak traffic periods by hour,
day, week, month and year. The benefit to this granular
breakdown is that you can identify trends that can be
used to provide an enhanced user experience. For example,
if your Web site is used to promote a restaurant, you might
tailor your menu pages to display a lunch menu during peak
morning Web traffic and a dinner menu during peak afternoon
hours. Using Web analytics, you can identify the best hours
to present dynamic content. Your Web developer can provide
this functionality on your Web site, increasing your users'
interest, providing them viable benefits over competitive
sites, and bettering the chances that your visitors will
find what they are looking for and not abandon their search
in frustration.

DO WEB TRAFFIC REPORTS TELL THE WHOLE STORY?

If you are only crunching numbers, it is impossible to
accurately judge whether a user has had a satisfactory
experience at your Web site. They may have found the
information they were seeking, they may even have purchased
your products, but visitor number tallies alone cannot tell
you if your visitors were confused or frustrated and whether
or not they will return to your site in the future. Nor can
they tell you what changes you need to make to reduce a
user's pain threshold at your site or what changes should
be made to increase the overall level of satisfaction with
their site experience.

By analyzing the "click path" (also known as "clickstream")
of your visitors, you can begin to understand their
behavioral patterns. Then, suddenly, behavior analytics
becomes a powerful tool for optimizing your Web site content
and overall performance.

Click path reports can also be very useful in identifying a
navigational issue commonly known as, "click distance."
Click distance refers to the distance in which a user has to
move their mouse in order to navigate your Web site. If your
site navigation is cumbersome, you may be causing the end
user more click distance and as a result they may not see,
or find, links to pages that are important to your site's
success.

In addition to click path and click distance, it is also
important to understand the means in which your visitors
access your Web site. Statistical information about their
computer operating system, browser type and screen resolution
can go a long way in helping you provide optimal content and
navigation. For example, if your Web site provides a software
download, you can improve your visitor's experience by
dynamically directing them to a download page that is best
suited for their computer type. If, in your operating system
analytic reports, you find that you have a high volume of Mac
users, then it would be wise to ensure that the nature of your
content satisfactorily relates to them. Another great example
of technology analytics would be screen resolution. If you have
a large percentage of visitors viewing at 800x600 it would
behoove you to ensure that your Web pages view well at that
resolution. If not, you are forcing unneeded horizontal scroll,
which could in fact be a troublesome source of abandoned visits.

THE KEYWORDS TO SUCCESS

It is a well known statistic that 85% or more of Web site
traffic is derived from search engines. Search Engines
provide a fuzzy roadmap to billions of Web pages -- hopefully
this includes yours. If you are listed, you really are the
proverbial needle in a haystack, so maximizing your search engine
relevancy is one of the most important marketing strategies you
can employ. An additional benefit of understanding keyword
relevancy is that this data will go a long way in helping you
streamline your visitor's experience. Once you have the
information, you can take your visitors directly to specific
pages within your Web site, potentially bypassing irrelevant
levels of information that might otherwise cause them to lose
interest, thus prematurely exit your site.

Again, Web Analytics offers insightful information by providing
you with actual keywords and key phrases used by real customers
who found your Web site from a search engine listing. Within
keyword reports, what you do not see is often more important
than what you do. For example, if you sell red sweaters and
the key phrase "red sweaters" does not appear in your search
engine keyword reports, or has limited use, then this provides
you with key information about your meta data and marketing
efforts for that page(s). If you combine search engine click-
through analysis with visitor click path (which pages they are
starting on) you can instantly identify which pages are marketed
well and which need improvement.

THE BIG PICTURE

To truly understand all the factors contributing to your Web
site user's overall level of satisfaction, you must combine
your knowledge of visitor traffic, behavioral analytics and
keyword analysis. This melding of data provides a far richer,
extensive and complete picture of your user's Web site experience
and provides you with a vital road map of the actions necessary
to enhance your visitors' site experience; and this will keep
them coming back.

===========================================================
The author of this article, Stephen Oachs,
is senior project manager for VisiStat.com (http://www.visistat.com).
Oachs has been in the industry for over a decade, specializing in
online business and ecommerce development. He is a published writer,
having written articles on a variety of Web development topics,
including collaboration on the book, "Web Design Index,"
published by The Pepin Press (2000).
Learn more at http://www.visistat.com or write Stephen at
at stephen@visistat.com
===========================================================

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