WEB ANALYTICS AND METRICS

WHAT IS WEB ANALYTICS?Analytics is the act of distinguishing categories within

recorded stats, and analyzing for patterns. The process of analytics means, literally, taking apart the whole of something in order to study its component parts

Web Analytics It is the process of measuring, collecting, analyzing and reporting on internet data for the purpose of understanding how website is used by audience.

To determine its success:

Study of visitor.

Navigation.

Traffic Pattern.

THE VALUE OF WEB ANALYTICS

Make smarter business decisions

Increase revenue online.

Decrease costsOptimized marketing investment.Effective site design & content management. Improved customer self-service.

Maximize return on insightDecrease acquisition costs Increase conversion rates Improve customer retention

How a web analytics helps business grow?

Web Analytics is a great thing which helps you to take some important business decisions .

Web analytics Web site analytics is a continuous and repetitive process comprised of five major steps: Collect, measure, report, analyze and optimize. These are:--Set Goals - Identify clients' goals and objectives Measure - Use web analytics software to collect relevant data Report - Compile data in relevant, human-readable reports tied into KPI's Analyze - Define web site or landing page changes based on report analysis Optimize - Test and implement modifications and repeat

WHAT CAN WE TRACK?

Things like……

How people arrive at website?

How they navigate a website?

How they find information on a website?

How they value website content?

How they respond to call-to-action?

TRACKING VARIABLES

With Tracking Variables, you can present important, business-specific data that will help increase customer retention and chase flaws of our site. 

Any web-accessible information from your Web Site or databases can be used as tracking variable for e.g. user logins, Unique Id , marketing campaign data.

Theses also helps in indentify visitors coming from your online marketing campaigns.

Business Reports are also available to generate comprehensive analysis of Tracking Variable.

There are three different types of Scope:

Visitor, Session and Page.

Visitor scope: value associated with unique visitors.

Session scope: Value associated with session.

Page scope: value associated with specific page in navigation sequence. E.g. keyword search

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Getting Started……..

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Reaction

Reporting

Analysis

Decision

Action

Report on the key metrics per your site objectives

R.A.D.A.R. modelMeasurable Improvement Cycle :It is a simple process to improve your website that will help focus your benchmarks.

Analyse the data to identify trends and areas that need improvement

Decide which area of thesite to focus on now

Take action! Make a change and monitor the

reaction it triggers

With every action, there’s a reaction from your visitors to the change you’ve made

TYPES OF WEBSITES & METRICS USEDCommerce Bounce Rates Conversion Rates Customer Loyalty Average Visit value Content/Media Sites New Visitor Rate Page depth Returning visitor ratio Visit depth Lead generation Cost per lead Traffic concentration Support/Self Service Internal Search phrases Customer satisfaction

Web usage and patterns

Financial analysis (ROI)

User supplied dataTransactions

Site performance Usability

WHAT ARE WEB METRICS?

Web Metrics

MetricsThe ‘metrics’ of web metrics refers to measurement, the science of measuring websites. Specifically, measuring website events, and extracting trends.

METRICS GOALS AND RESULT

The Goal of Web Metrics is to show you how to :-

drive improvements.

Increase Conversion.

Increase Customer Retention.

Evaluation of how site performs.

Improve your search engine marketing (SEM) campaigns and website performance

Hence Results are Happy customers and Higher ROI

KEY PERFORMANCE INDICATORS

Key Performance Indicators, also known as KPI or Key Success Indicators (KSI), help an organization define and measure progress toward organizational goals

Whatever, the performance indicators are there they must key to success and they must be quantifiable(measurable),actionable.

These are long term indicators.

Usability in KPI:

Increases RevenueReduces CostImprove Customer Loyalty and Satisfaction

HITSHit in Web analytics is: "any request for a file from a Web server“Or Total number of server requests serviced by the server

This means that every request that is made to a Web server can be considered a hit. Every time an image is downloaded for display on a Web page is a hit. For example, a simple Web page with seven images would result in eight hits to the server.

Requesting auxiliary files like CSS or JavaScript are all counted as hits.

They are only really useful if you're a Web server administrator and you want to find out why a page is slow to load.

“SESSIONS”

A period of activity (all hits) for one user of a website. A unique user is determined by the IP address or cookie.

Typically, a user session is terminated when a user is inactive for more than 30 minutes which is the default time-out value of any web application (can be changed)

Session TrackingThis mechanism which helps the servers to maintain the state to track the series of requests from the same user across some period of time. 

PAGEVIEWS OR PAGE VIEWS

A pageview is each time a visitor views a page on your website, regardless of how many hits are generated or request made to the server for a page.

Pageviews are the successful loading of a document from a Web server by a visitor. Page views are an attempt to measure how many documents were viewed by customers on your Website. This includes images, scripts, CSS, and sometimes sound and video files.Pageviews are used to convey the popularity of your Web site or page.

What Pageviews generally do not include:error pagesviews by robots Files that are generally considered "part" of a Web page, but not the complete content segment themselves are not usually considered a pageview.

Page views per visit. This is the depth of site exploration. How engaged are visitors, to the site.Average Number of Page Views per Visit — Page Impressions/Visits

VISITOR

A visitor is a unique individual user of a web

Site

Tracking methods vary

VISITS OR SESSIONS OR USER SESSIONS

A visit is a collection of documents viewed by a given user and IP address combination (or if you have logins, the actual customer logged in) during a pre-defined unit of time.

This is the Activity for one visitor also default 30 minutes of inactivity also called a visit.

A visit is an interaction with the website for a specified period of time. It is how a user wanders over your website.

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For example: If a visitor visits your website considered as one visits and if he goes for a 30 minutes break ,then he’ll be terminated considering as left the site. Again Wandering after specified time (30 min.) then considered as two visits.

New Visitors: The number of Unique Visitors who is visting the site for first time.

Returning Visitors A returning visitor is a visitor who visits your site with a 24 hour period in between

UNIQUE VISITORS

UV is the Interaction of a single user has with a website over time.

A unique visitor is a person (usually defined by user-agent and IP) who has come to your Web site within a pre-defined period of time. These are the actual people visiting your site and they can only be counted once during your time frame.

For Example:

If I visit your site once today and again two days from now and your measurement timeframe is 1 week, then I would be counted once. If your measurement were daily, then I would be counted for each day I viewed your site.

CLICKSTREAM ANALYSIS

A clickstream is a series of page requests, every page requested generates a signal.

It is recording of what a user clicks on web browsing.

Clickstream Analysis is a tracking system which gives webmasters insight into what visitors on their site are doing. These are presented in order they were viewed.

Also called ”succession of mouse clicks”.

This Analysis helps further to-

Obtain Quality traffic.

These convert visitor to Customer.

Creates action that generates revenue.

CONVERSIONConversion: An action that signifies a completion of a specified activity. For many sites, a user converts to customer if they buy a product, sign up for a newsletter,or download a file. Cookie deletion can have an impact on your conversion rate because if a cookie is being systematically deleted, repeat visitor rates will be under-counted and new visitor rates will be over-counted, thus skewing the conversion rate metric by which you analyze your site's overall effectiveness.Conversion Rate: The relationship between visitors to a web site and actions considered to be a "conversion," such as a sale or request to receive more information. The conversion rate is the percentage of visitors who do convert.

CLICK THROUGH RATE

Clickthrough rate or CTR is typically defined as number of clicks on an ad divided by number of ad impressions for a given time period. It is a way of measuring the success of an online advertising campaign. A CTR is obtained by dividing the "number of users who clicked on an ad" on a web page by the "number of times the ad was delivered" (impressions). For example, if a banner ad was delivered 100 times (impressions delivered) and 1 person clicked on it (clicks recorded), then the resulting CTR would be 1 percent.

The more successful the campaign, the higher the CTR. Calculating click-through rate

CTR = (clicks / impressions) × 100

BOUNCE RATE

The percentage of entrances on a web page that result in an immediate exit from the web site.

A bounce occurs when a web site visitor only views a single page on a website and he leaves a site without visiting any other pages before a specified session-timeout occurs. 

Calculation

A visitor can bounce by: Clicking on a link to a page on a different web site Closing an open window or tab Typing a new URL. Clicking the "Back" button to leave the site Session timeout.

Bounce rate = total number of visits that left one page / total number of web visits

RETURN ON INVESTMENT - ROI

What Does Return On Investment - ROI Mean? It is the ratio of money gained or lost on an investment relative to the amount of money invested. To calculate ROI, the benefit (return) of an investment is divided by the cost of the investment; the result is expressed as a percentage or a ratio. The return formula:

In the above formula "gains from investment", refers to the proceeds obtained from selling the investment of interest.  Return on investment is a very popular metric because of its versatility and simplicity. That is, if an investment does not have a positive ROI, or if there are other opportunities with a higher ROI, then the investment should be not be undertaken.

IMPRESSIONS

The number of times an advertisement has been displayed is referred to as the number of impressions.An impression is each time an advertisement loads on a user's screen.The display of an online advertisement (usually a banner ad) to a web site visitor.

Campaig

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• The Advertising campaign is a series of  advertisement messages that share a single idea and which make integrated marketing communication.

Track

ppc campaig

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• Tracking PPC campaigns is absolutely necessary to ensure that your pay per click ads are effective and attractive enough to bring more and more visitors to your site

• You can use ga.js for tracking in Google analytics

Campaign

Pay per click (PPC) is an Internet advertising model used on websites,where advertisers pay their host only when their ad is clicked.

“REFERRER” AND “DIRECT TRAFFIC”

No Referrer - Direct Traffic“No Referrer” or “Direct Traffic” represents direct traffic to the web site as the result of one of the following: •Visitors who type the domain name directly into the browser•Visitors who bookmark the site•Visistors who have the page set as their home page•Visitors who click on an email link, shortcut, or other direct link

Referrer or referring URL’sReferrer is the page on another web site that linked visitors to your site. Referring URLs tell you where your visitors came from to get to your site. You can use this information to determine which external sites are the best ones to place links on, or ads for, your site.Where does our traffic come from? These are external web pages that brought traffic to our site.

LANDING PAGES,EXIT AND ENTRY PAGES

Landing Page, is the page that appears when a potential customer clicks on an advertisement. A page intended to identify the beginning of the user experience resulting from a defined marketing effort

There are two types of landing pages:

1) A reference landing page presents information that is relevant to the visitor. These can display text, images, dynamic compilations of relevant links, or other elements

2) A transactional landing page seeks to persuade a visitor to complete a transaction such as filling out a form or interacting with advertisements or other objects on the landing page, with the goal being the immediate sale of a product or service.

Entry Page: The first page of a visit.

Exit Page: The last page on a site accessed during a visit, signifying the end of a visit/session.

Page Exit Ratio (Page Exits/Page Visits)

CONTD….

Exits — The departure of a visitor from the site, signifying the end of a visit or session or Site exits, counted by site inactivity for more than 30 minutes.

Top Pages- The Pages that receive the most traffic

Visitor Path- The route visitor uses to navigate through the website.

Visit Length – The total amount of time the visitor spends on website.

Keyword Analysis- which keywords are visitors using to find website.

TIME ON SITE

How long a visitor stays on your website has long been considered a key indication of how successful that site is in attracting relevant visitors

True time on site:

Average Time on Site / (1 - Bounce Rate)

ADVERTISEMENT METRICSbanner ad - a graphical web advertising unit, typically measuring 468

pixels wide and 60 pixels tall (i.e. 468x60).

button ad - a graphical advertising unit, smaller than a banner ad.

cost-per-action (CPA) - Online advertising payment model in which payment is based solely on qualifying actions such as sales or registrations.

cost-per-click (CPC) - the cost or cost-equivalent paid per click-through.

customer acquisition cost - the cost associated with acquiring a new customer.

Web site traffic - The amount of visitors and visits a Web site receives.

text ad - advertisement using text-based hyperlinks.

surround session - advertising sequence in which a visitor receives ads from one advertiser throughout an entire site visit.

pay per lead (PPL) - online advertising payment model in which payment is based solely based on qualifying leads.

pay per sale (PPS) - online advertising payment model in which payment is based solely based on qualifying sales.

TOOLS FOR WEB ANALYTICS

AWStats

Elogic

Google Analytics

Unica

Web Trends

StatCounter

Core Metrics

W3Perl

Webalizer

Omniture