Getting To Know Your Website

It never ceases to amaze me how much time we can spend in designing a website. We go through the trouble of creating a beautiful layout. The ultimate website navigation and will help users get to point A to point B. We meticulously write our messages and content, and then… And then we wait for people to show up. It’s the real life "Field of Dreams." What a scary thought. So here's the real question. How do you know who’s coming, where users are going, what links they are clicking, where are users dropping out or any other potential questions you may have about your website? Quite the dilemma.

To really get to know your website is to embrace two words. Web Analytics. Without web analytics, you may as well be calling the Psychic Friends Network about how your website is doing. Why? Because your website, no matter how good or bad you may think things are is a mystery. You really don’t know what’s happening on your website until you look and analyze something called “server logs”.

What’s a Server Log?
Good question, my friend. A server log contains a recording of every visitor to your website. The logs contain valuable information like: length of visitor stay on pages or overall website, links clicked, how the person moved through your website. In some cases you can learn where the visitors are coming from. By that I mean the actual State or Country. That alone can provide a surprise or too and help you in targeting your efforts. Server logs to say the least are a treasure trove and scorecard of how you are doing with people on your site. Sadly, most people rarely or never look at this data. Instead they may opt for the intuitive approach, often based on their subjective experience. In some cases this may work, but those instances are extremely rare.

Web Analytics 101
Now that you have a basic idea of what a server log is, now it’s time to talk about what you can do with that data. You will have to get a web analytics program, which is what you’ll use to read the information in your server logs. As a point, looking at a server log without this software looks pretty much like gibberish. You’ll never figure out what’s going on from a raw server log.

At a glance here are some typical things that you can learn.

1. Number of visitors to the website. (remember there is a difference between a page visit and a page view.


2. Which links visitors are clicking on in your navigation system.


3. Which pages on your website visitors visited. This is often ordered by which pages where visited most often to least.


4. Visitor Path. This information lets you know how a user moved though your website. This is huge. You can not only see what people are interested in but also learn where people abandon your website.


5. Time on particular pages and website overall.


6. Search engine referrers.


7. State and country referrers.


8. Websites that are liked to you and sending you visitors.


9. If you are using Pay-Per-Click (PPC) like Google or Yahoo!, the software will usually allow you to track cost per lead based on campaigns that you are running.

This information is extremely important and website owners are frequently surprised by what they learn. You can finally begin to see what is really happening on the website. You can change or rearrange content and user interfaces to influence increased traffic or longer page views . It’s a great opportunity to improve the experience visitors have when they come to your website and get the most out of it.

As a note, the better you get at determining what users are doing and making adjustments (that are helpful to them) and changes, your credibility with visitors will usually improve. Improved credibility translated into increased website transactions and enhanced brand identity.

Web Analytics Software

Here’s the rub. The Web analytics universe is probably about to change. Why? Google Analytics. This is a web based project which Google currently has in testing. As a matter of fact, I’m fortunate enough to be giving it a spin. Unfortunately they are not accepting more users at this time, but you can submit your email address and get on their waiting list. From what I’ve tested and seen, it’s already well formed and pretty solid and getting valuable information is a snap.

Speaking for other tools, though the industry standard of the past has been WebTrends, there are a couple reasons why I really didn’t like using it. 1) They license the product based on number of page visitors. This is really a lame concept because you feel like you don’t actually own the software and there are limits. Most people have no idea what their site visits are so it’s almost unfair how they license the product. If you have enough traffic on your website, you can end up throwing away a lot of cash. 2) WebTrends can be very server intensive. Processing logs on your own server can reduce performance and cause problems. You have to be very careful how you set your system up. They do have good user interfaces and reports. But like I said before, they have a few things I did not prefer from a tech standpoint.

Net Tracker is a tool that I did some extensive testing with and have a strong bias towards (because it's soeffective). As a matter of fact it’s one of my favorites. The interface and dashboards are really clean and easy to read. You can easily generate ad-hoc reports and see your data, pretty much anyway that you want. Back when I was testing it, they had a really good price point and you really do own the software unlike WebTrends. If you get 1,000 views or 1,000,000 you never have to worry about exceeding your license. Also I found setup to be a snap and the overall speed to be really good.

Clicktracks is another tool that I currently use. It’s a good tool when it comes to PPC (Pay-Per-Click), like Google Adwords and Yahoo! (formerly Overture). It’s definitely not as robust as either WebTrends or Net Tracker but it does some things well. The focus is on what they call “user-behavior”. I found that there are some quirks to their software, but it’s not an overly steep learning curve. But remember, it’s not as robust as other products that I’ve mentioned here.

Conclusion

1. Dig into your server logs.


2. Use Web Analytics software that makes sense for where your at and will suit your needs (and budget).


3. Take the time to study what is going on in your website and address issues, so that you can be more successful.


4. Don’t allow your website to be a slum. Work with your site because it can be a really dynamic entity and serve you well.


5. Don’t waste visitors time, offering content and information that doesn’t fit the reason why they came to your website in the first place. Learn from the what you are seeing in the data, revise and execute your business strategy on the web.

// Jaye Morris