Understanding web site analytics

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Slide presentation on web site analytics for UIBE, believe me when I say you want to watch the video on this one. Video will be at the end of this one when done.

Transcript of Understanding web site analytics

  • 1. MBA 520University of International Business andEconomicsBeijing China 2013Understanding Web Site Analytics
  • 2. What are Web Site Analytics? When we put data on the internet, we can trackhow that data is used or consumed by users Web analytics is the measurement, collection,analysis and reporting of internet data forpurposes of understanding and optimizing webusage Web Analytics shows us how people use our dataor our web site Helps companies see what is popular and what is not Helps e-commerce sites see what is popular, wherecustomers drop off, and if they abandon the web site asthey move through the system Web analytics can show us how people share data off oursite
  • 3. Terminology Hit - A request for a file from the web server. Available onlyin log analysis. The number of hits received by a website isfrequently cited to assert its popularity, but this number isextremely misleading and dramatically overestimatespopularity. A single web-page typically consists of multiple(often dozens) of discrete files, each of which is countedas a hit as the page is downloaded, so the number of hitsis really an arbitrary number more reflective of thecomplexity of individual pages on the website than thewebsites actual popularity. The total number of visits orpage views provides a more realistic and accurateassessment of popularity. Page view - A request for a file, or sometimes an eventsuch as a mouse click, that is defined as a page in thesetup of the web analytics tool. An occurrence of the scriptbeing run in page tagging. In log analysis, a single pageview may generate multiple hits as all the resourcesrequired to view the page (images, .js and .css files) arealso requested from the web server.
  • 4. Terminology Visit / Session - A visit or session is defined as a series of pagerequests or, in the case of tags, image requests from the sameuniquely identified client. A visit is considered ended when norequests have been recorded in some number of elapsedminutes. A 30 minute limit ("time out") is used by many analyticstools but can, in some tools, be changed to another number ofminutes. Analytics data collectors and analysis tools have noreliable way of knowing if a visitor has looked at other sitesbetween page views; a visit is considered one visit as long as theevents (page views, clicks, whatever is being recorded) are 30minutes or less closer together. Note that a visit can consist ofone page view, or thousands. First Visit / First Session - (also called Absolute Unique Visitor insome tools) A visit from a uniquely identified client that hastheoretically not made any previous visits. Since the only way ofknowing whether the uniquely identified client has been to thesite before is the presence of a persistent cookie that had been
  • 5. Terminology Visitor / Unique Visitor / Unique User - The uniquelyidentified client that is generating page views or hits withina defined time period (e.g. day, week or month). A uniquelyidentified client is usually a combination of a machine(ones desktop computer at work for example) and abrowser (Firefox on that machine). The identification isusually via a persistent cookie that has been placed on thecomputer by the site page code. An older method, used inlog file analysis, is the unique combination of thecomputers IP address and the User Agent (browser)information provided to the web server by the browser. It isimportant to understand that the "Visitor" is not the sameas the human being sitting at the computer at the time ofthe visit, since an individual human can use differentcomputers or, on the same computer, can use differentbrowsers, and will be seen as a different visitor in eachcircumstance. Increasingly, but still somewhat rarely,visitors are uniquely identified by Flash LSOs (LocalShared Object), which are less susceptible to privacyenforcement.
  • 6. Terminology Repeat Visitor - A visitor that has made at least one previousvisit. The period between the last and current visit is called visitorrecency and is measured in days. New Visitor - A visitor that has not made any previous visits. Thisdefinition creates a certain amount of confusion (see commonconfusions below), and is sometimes substituted with analysis offirst visits. Impression - The most common definition of "Impression" is aninstance of an advertisement appearing on a viewed page. Notethat an advertisement can be displayed on a viewed page belowthe area actually displayed on the screen, so most measures ofimpressions do not necessarily mean an advertisement has beenviewable. Single Page Visit / Singleton - A visit in which only a single pageis viewed (a bounce). Bounce Rate - The percentage of visits that are single page
  • 7. Terminology Page Time Viewed / Page Visibility Time / Page ViewDuration - The time a single page (or a blog, AdBanner...) is on the screen, measured as thecalculated difference between the time of the requestfor that page and the time of the next recordedrequest. If there is no next recorded request, then theviewing time of that instance of that page is notincluded in reports. Session Duration / Visit Duration - Average amount oftime that visitors spend on the site each time theyvisit. This metric can be complicated by the fact thatanalytics programs can not measure the length of thefinal page view. Average Page View Duration - Average amount oftime that visitors spend on an average page of thesite.
  • 8. Terminology Active Time / Engagement Time - Average amount of time that visitorsspend actually interacting with content on a web page, based on mousemoves, clicks, hovers and scrolls. Unlike Session Duration and PageView Duration / Time on Page, this metric can accurately measure thelength of engagement in the final page view, but it is not available inmany analytics tools or data collection methods. Average Page Depth / Page Views per Average Session - Page Depthis the approximate "size" of an average visit, calculated by dividing totalnumber of page views by total number of visits. Frequency / Session per Unique - Frequency measures how oftenvisitors come to a website in a given time period. It is calculated bydividing the total number of sessions (or visits) by the total number ofunique visitors during a specified time period, such as a month or year.Sometimes it is used interchangeable with the term "loyalty." Click path - the chronological sequence of page views within a visit orsession. Click - "refers to a single instance of a user following a hyperlink fromone page in a site to another".[8] Site Overlay is a report technique in which statistics (clicks) or hot spotsare superimposed, by physical location, on a visual snapshot of the webpage.
  • 9. What Analytics Look Like
  • 10. Audience Overview
  • 11. Visitors
  • 12. Demographics
  • 13. Visits by Duration
  • 14. Visits by Pages
  • 15. Visitor Geography
  • 16. New VS Returning
  • 17. Engagement
  • 18. Mobile VS Non-Mobile
  • 19. Device Used (Mobile)
  • 20. Social Networks
  • 21. China
  • 22. Visitor Flow
  • 23. Visitor Flow
  • 24. Visitors Flow
  • 25. Repeat Visitors
  • 26. Where did Visitors Come From?
  • 27. Referrals
  • 28. Referrals Search Engines
  • 29. Referrals Social Media
  • 30. Page Views
  • 31. Questions?