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Ezine InformationWeb Analytics - Acquiring it Right
by:
WG Moore
Web Analytics
Getting It Right
By WG Moore
Understanding and exploitation web analytics.
In recent years, website marketers were concerned with increasing ¡®hits¡¯ and the ¡®stickiness¡¯ of their sites. They were concerned with increasing page views and the figure of time spent on the site. This is decidedly a hold over from the paper based businesses of the past, and has established to not be of more use in the fast moving computer network world.
As a result, hits and views are no longer considered useful metrics for evaluating website success. They just don¡¯t provide the right kind of information needful by online marketers. Now they look at conversions, drop-out rates, return on investment and revenue per visitor.
Internet marketers of now want to do more money. To do this, they must understand their visitors, their motives, wherever
they came from, what they were looking for, and how they found the site. And most important of all: what ready-made them do the decision to buy or what ready-made them abandon the purchase.
In order to accomplish this, they need a powerful new set of analysis tools; tools that are fast, accurate and easy to use. And most important, these tools must be able to measure performance over time. That is, the seller inevitably to be able to set a baseline for any metric and then measure a percentage of increase or decrease at a later time. And the time frame inevitably to be long enough to show important results ¨C normally 30 days or more.
Here are a few common problems resolved
by the proper use of web analytics:
Good traffic, but a high Bounce Rate
A ¡®Bounce¡¯ is a visitant who comes to your site and leaves without looking at any another pages. The number of bounces is compared to those who visit more than one page to give a ¡®Bounce Rate¡¯. All websites have a bounce rate. Whether it is high or not is relative to the site. Only amount taken over a period of time wish show an average for any particular site.
There are two main problems that lead to a high bounce rate: Attracting the wrong kind of traffic and not giving the visitant what they were looking for.
To identify the 1st case, open the New Visitors report. This report should contain a list of unique, first-time visitors. The report should besides show the 1st page visited and wherever
they came from. The origin may be empty, due to a number of reasons outside the control of the analytics package. Choice a visitant that came from a search engine. Now ¡®Drill Down¡¯ by clicking on the chosen line and opening a detail view of this visitor. The detail page wish show the search term used to find your site.
Was the search term relative to the subject matter of the landing page? Were they only looking for thing
free? Looking at a number of search terms wish reveal if the wrong kind of traffic is coming in.
If the search terms are appropriate, then the searches are drive qualified traffic to the site. If this is the case, the high bounce rate is due to the page content not properly addressing the visitant expectations.
High Drop-Out Rate
According to Jupiter Research, 71 percentage of sites do not analyze client drop-out rates, even as although 66 percentage of consumers according having abandoned a purchase piece on a website.
The drop-out rate wish show an increase, or hopefully, a decrease with time. A properly designed purchasing process wish capture personal contact information before continued
with the checkout process. This contact information can be used to contact the lost sale and discuss the reasons.
The Drop-Out report should show the visitor, the product and date and time of sale. Choice one line in the report and drill down to view the contact information, if available. Call or email the visitant to discover the reasons for abandoning the sale.
Also, the computer network seller should discuss the purchasing process with current customers. This is an first-class know-how
of increasing client loyalty. It besides provides an chance to gather testimonials. Most buyers wish have visited some times before they bought. Ask why they didn¡¯t buy the 1st time they visited the site. Also, ask why they came back and what actuated them to buy.
Poor Return On Investment
Probably the most difficult challenge baby-faced by computer network marketers is dominant
costs. Traffic acquisition can be an big-ticket proposition, so it is important to get the most out of every click.
The better marketing reports reveal wherever
the money comes from, who the money comes from, and what marketers can do to improve revenues. Marketers can use this information to increase advertisements on sites that reach the most interested parties, provide a better selection of products for some types of visitors, or offer better service to their most valuable visitors.
The marketing reports should show sales sorted by campaign or affiliate. At a minimum, they should show units of sales by product and product options, and sooner revenue.
Compare advertising price with revenues to identify the most profitable campaigns. Often the seller wish find that one campaign may bring in more visitors, but conversion is low, whereas another mightiness bring in fewer, but more qualified visitors who purchase more.
The use of A/B testing to increase pull power of ads is vital to keeping ad price down and attracting qualified visitors. Here, the seller wish find it easy to measure changes and measure overall performance. Instead of taking months to identify and understand the effect of a change, it wish often show in hours or a few days. This legerity means that even as smaller e-commerce sites can succeed on limited budgets.
Path Analysis / Clickstream Analysis ¨C Understanding visitors
Not actually a problem, but vital to keeping a healthy web business running smoothly. The seller is besides able to identify new trends and opportunities by evaluating the visitors¡¯ interest in various content accessible on the site.
The ideal path through the site should go from the landing page to the products page to the orders page, from there to the checkout and finally to a ¡®Thank You¡¯ page.
Deviations mightiness include paths to tutorials, articles and another information pages, but these should be unbroken
to a minimum and always lead back to the main path.
Again, the seller can choice a particular visitor, purchaser or drop-out and then drill down to the detail page to reveal every page visited and path taken, as well as the figure of time spent viewing each page. Knowing how long it takes to actually see the page wish reveal the figure of interest in the subject matter. Combining this information with keyword searches wish reveal how appropriate the content of each page is to the visitor¡¯s interests.
In Summary
The value of the analysis far exceeds the nominal cost of the web analytics service. Indeed, it may spell the difference between success and failure. Nice web analytics packages can be hard to find, but need not be expensive. Increasingly, more and more comprehensive reports are accessible at better prices.
To be effective, the seller must understand what to look for and how to apply the cognition discovered by the analysis. The learning curve is not steep, and the rewards can be significant.
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About the author
WG Moore is a web analytics specialist with over 20 years of hardware, software system and web development experience. Visit http://www.webstatsgold.com for more articles and information on web analytics. You may contact him at will@webstatsgold.com
Copyright 2005 by WG Moore
Permission is granted for this article to forward, reprint, distribute, use for in ezines, newsletters, websites, to offer as free bonus or part of a product for sale as long as no changes are ready-made and the byline, copyright, and the resource box below is included.
Just about the author:
WG Moore is a web analytics specialist with over 20 years of hardware, software system and web development experience. Visit http://www.webstatsgold.comfor more articles and information on web analytics. You may contact him at will@webstatsgold.com
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