Which Pages Are Popular and Which Pages Are Not?

Which Pages Are Popular and Which Pages Are Not?
What pages are most popular with your visitors? Do you see traffic
spike when you have new content? Release a newsletter or news re-
Figure 27.2. This WebTrends report lets you know which versions of each
browser your visitors are using.
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lease? Do you get more traffic on the weekend or during the week? Are
your online marketing efforts having an impact? Are people clicking
through?
When you look at the log files and see where your audience is spending
most of their time on your site, you can also tell where they are not.
You can then use this information to determine what the popular pages
on your site incorporate that the less popular ones do not. Perhaps the
popular pages are similar to the less popular, but are visited by a specific
source (i.e., search engines, newsgroups). Maybe there is a content
problem on the less popular pages, or maybe they take longer to load
than the other pages and visitors do not want to wait for them to load.
Whatever the case may be, you can use this information and attempt to
fix those problems that would keep visitors from spending time on all
the pages of your site.
Find Out How Each Visitor Found Your Site
By finding out how each visitor came to your site, you can boost your
traffic tremendously. You can determine which of your banner ads is producing
the best results (see Figure 27.3). You can use this information to
Figure 27.3. This WebTrends report identifies how frequently a banner ad is
viewed.
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Figure 27.4. This WebTrends report illustrates the first-time visitor sessions
initiated by searches from each search engine.
help you with the selection of banners you use and also the allocation of
your online advertising budget. You can determine how many visitors
found your site through search engines (see Figure 27.4). You can even
determine which keyword led to the most visitors through the search
engines (see Figure 27.5). If most of your traffic is coming from the Excite
search engine (http://www.excite.com), you could consider purchasing a
banner advertisement on that page. The same theory applies if your traffic
is coming from a newsgroup, meta-indexes, and so on.
You can also find out where your visitors go when they leave your
Web site. You want your viewers to stay at your site as long as possible.
If you notice that the majority of your viewers are not traveling through
your entire site and are not viewing important information that you
want them to see, you may want to manipulate the layout of your Web
site to decrease the “flight effect.” If you notice that your top exit page
is your home page, you might even decide to try a whole new approach
because people seem to be turned off from searching through your site
from the beginning.
Single-access pages are pages on your Web site that are accessed
through a link or search engine and then are immediately exited. If a
high percentage of your Web site traffic is a result of these pages, it is
very important that you convey a strong message while you have the
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visitors’ attention. If you have pages like this, you should reevaluate
what is on those pages and try to come up with content that entices
your visitor to search through the rest of your site.
Most of the Web traffic analysis software will tell you which keywords
and phrases your visitors used to find your site using a search
engine. This is extremely valuable information because you can use these
keywords to increase your popularity in the search engines. By knowing
the most popular keywords your visitors are using to visit your site, you
can make sure you use them in your meta-tags, Alt tags, and page titles,
and in the text of your page for higher placement in the search engines.
Also, by seeing which search engines are being used more by your visitors,
you can choose to purchase a banner ad or keywords for that
engine to achieve maximum visibility to your market.
Another benefit of observing who is viewing your site is that you
can see when spiders and crawlers from search engines have crawled to
your page. This means that your site most likely will be indexed on their
corresponding search engine. This is good to know, not only because it
reassures you that you are going to be indexed, but also because by
Figure 27.5. This WebTrends report identifies the specific keywords that led
the most visitors to the site through the search engines.
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knowing this, you will not resubmit your site to the search engine and
risk spamming.
Identifying Your Target Market
After you have collected data from your log files and used the Web
traffic analysis software to determine which demographic groups are
actually visiting your site, you then must determine whether these are
the groups that you want to target. If not, you must then determine how
you are going to reach your target market. For example, you might find
that you need to change your online advertising campaign. Or perhaps
you should reevaluate your Internet marketing strategy, taking into consideration
the new data that you have collected.
Find out What Forms of Online Promotion Work for Your Site
When you first launch your Web site, you are going to aggressively
implement your Internet marketing strategy by experimenting with all
of the different forms of online marketing. However, when you analyze
who is actually visiting your site and you find out where the majority of
your traffic is coming from, you can then determine where to focus the
majority of your marketing efforts. You might find that a link on a
particular Web site is resulting in a high amount of traffic to your site;
therefore, you might consider purchasing a banner advertisement on
that site. The same goes for all of the other forms of Internet marketing.
If, after a short period of time, your analysis software tells you that you
are receiving low traffic from a banner ad that you have purchased, you
should pull it off that site and allocate your investment to another site
on the Internet. This is a good way to make sure you get the most for
your investments in online marketing.
How Do You Get Web Traffic
Analysis Software for Your Site?
One option is to use a tracking service like eXTReMe Tracking (http://
www.extreme-dm.com), where the tracking software resides on the ser-
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vice provider’s server. You place the tracker code on your Web site,
which provides all the input to the tracking software, and then you have
access to all the tracking reports.
You can purchase Web traffic analysis software if you wish, but
for it to work it must be installed on the server where you host your
Web site. If you are hosting your own Web site, you definitely have
to purchase your own software; however, if you are paying an ISP to
host your Web site, the host should already be able to provide some
sort of analysis software. Most people don’t take advantage of the
tremendous marketing opportunities available from analyzing their
traffic; therefore, they do not ask their ISP about the software. It
should be available to you, for you are paying for their services. If it
is not, simply ask them to purchase the Web traffic analysis software
of your choice, for they would much rather have you as a client than
say no. In some cases they might charge you an additional fee for this
service.
Internet Resources for Chapter 27
I have included a few resources for you to check out regarding Web
traffic analysis. For additional resources on a variety of topics, visit the
Resources section of my Web site at http://www.susansweeney.com/
resources.html. There you can find additional tips, tools, and resources.
Web Traffic Analysis Services
Analog
http://www.analog.cx
“The most popular log file analyzer in the world.”
eXTReMe Tracker
http://www.extreme-dm.com/tracking
The eXTReMe Tracker is a completely free service that offers comprehensive
real-time reporting, with no limit on the amount of traffic that
you receive on your Web site. It is capable of tracking your visitors’
geographic location, their domain, e-mail address, the browser they are
using, and much more.
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Funnel Web Analyzer
http://www.quest.com/funnel_web/analyzer
Every person who visits your company’s Web site leaves behind a trail.
Your Web server logs their every action, and you can use this information
to help improve your business. Funnel Web Analyzer provides essential
Web site visitor and traffic analysis. It measures everything from server
load and referrals to visitor demographics and marketing ROI. Funnel
Web Analyzer helps you optimize your Web site, by allowing you to analyze
how users interact with your site, and helps you make informed decisions
about what changes you can make to improve their experience.
HitBox
http://www.hitbox.com
HitBox is designed for ad-supported, personal, or e-commerce sites. It’s
capable of developing user profiles, tracking which sites refer visitors to
your site, and how much traffic you receive on a daily, monthly, and
annual basis. HitBox can also track how your visitors navigate around
your Web site, which can help you in customizing your Web site to your
viewers’ needs.
IBM SurfAid Analytics
http://surfaid.dfw.ibm.com/web/home/index.html
SurfAid customers range from startups to Internet giants. Regardless of
your traffic volumes, SurfAid processes your data in hours. SurfAid has
handled the processing and analysis for some of the world’s most heavily
trafficked Web sites to date, including the 2000 Sydney Olympic Games.
TheCounter.com
http://www.thecounter.com
The Counter provides tracking services to its members. By placing a
small image on your Web site, you can get information such as when
your visitors came, from where, and by using what browser. If you are
just experimenting with Web traffic analysis, you can’t go wrong with
TheCounter.com.
Webalizer
http://www.mrunix.net/webalizer
The Webalizer is a fast, free Web server log file analysis program. It
produces highly detailed, easily configurable usage reports in HTML
format, for viewing with a standard Web browser.
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Web Site Traffic Reports
http://www.websitetrafficreport.com
This free service provides you with a bit of code to insert into your Web
page, and then sends you an e-mail daily with your Web traffic report.
Web-Stat Traffic Analysis
http://www.web-stat.com
For $5 per month you can use this service, which provides very detailed
Web traffic analysis reports.
Web Traffic Analysis Software
AccessWatch
http://www.accesswatch.com
AccessWatch is open source shareware. AccessWatch generates browser
statistics, referrer, page views, and other Web site traffic statistics.
Mach5 FastStats Analyzer
http://www.mach5.com/products/analyzer/analyzer.html
A powerful software application that provides detailed analysis of your
server’s log files.
NetIQ’s WebTrends Enterprise Suite
http://www.netiq.com/webtrends/products/previous/reporting_series_
enterprise.asp
The WebTrends Enterprise Suite is one of the most comprehensive Web
site analysis software packages available. It provides you with reports
on everything from the number of views your banner ads receive on
another Web page, to which keyword was used when a visitor found
your site using a search engine. You can easily target specific hits and
user sessions that include file types and names, entry pages, time and
day, user addresses, or any other medium that might have pointed a
visitor to your page. WebTrends develops detailed advertising reports,
which tell you how often banners on your Web site are viewed and how
often people click through. This assists you in selling and billing space
to your clients. This is an all-in-one piece of Web traffic analysis software
that does more than answer the question of who is actually visiting
your site.
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NetTracker eBusiness Edition
http://www.sane.com
NetTracker uses an Oracle database engine, which is great for most
companies because they don’t need a database administrator to use it.
The Business Edition can handle really large log files with the speed and
agility of an Oracle8 database. The Business Edition also lets you access
your data for additional analysis using standard reporting tools such as
Crystal Reports and products from Cognos, Information Builders, and
more. This product contains 79 standardized summaries, plus you can
create and save your own. NetTracker generates usage reports for multiple
Web sites, proxy servers, firewalls, and FTP sites.
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28
Web Metrics
Over the past few years the Internet has come a long way toward being
a sales and distribution channel for most businesses. As with any
distribution channel, there are costs involved. Where business costs are
involved, the owners want to see a return on their investment. To determine
the return on investment, businesses need to measure and analyze
a number of things.
Over the past year we have seen more and more companies allocate
significantly more of their marketing budget to Internet marketing. Businesses
are taking the Internet very seriously these days. Businesses are
beginning to measure their Web site’s effectiveness from both a marketing
and a merchandising perspective. In this chapter, we cover:
• Measuring your online success
• What to measure
• Conversion ratio
• Sales per visitor
• Cost per visitor
• Cost per sale
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• Net profit per sale
• Return on investment
• Web metrics tools.
Measuring Your Online Success
E-commerce is a numbers game. The trick is to focus on
the right numbers so that you can make accurate decisions
about how to improve your Web site, and ultimately, your
customer conversion rate. Without e-metrics, the Web
continues to be a grand experiment, a government research
project that escaped the lab, mutated, and took
over the world. But with e-metrics you have the opportunity
to approach the Web from an objective, systematic
perspective. You can move from trial and error to trial,
measure and improve.
Bryan Eisenburg
CIO Future Now Inc.
http://futurenowinc.com
It is becoming imperative that companies track the effectiveness of
their online marketing campaigns in real time and make adjustments, if
necessary, immediately. It is also imperative that companies track the
effectiveness of the elements on their Web site and make adjustments
over time.
From a marketing perspective, organizations want to measure and
improve advertising effectiveness, click-throughs, cost of customer acquisitions,
etc.
From a Web site perspective, organizations want to improve online
sales, cross-sells, up-sells, customer retention rates, average order per
customer, number of page views per visitor, customer loyalty, newsletters,
sign-ups, and so on. They want to determine the most popular
areas of the site so the content can be improved. They want to identify
popular “exit” pages so they can modify them and make their site more
“sticky.”