Web analytics is something we should be well aware of when developing our website. Understanding what your visitors are doing
on your site can help you decide on changes that may need to be done. If visitors are coming to your site and not participating in your site then web analytics can help identify what happening and what can be done. The problem is that web server stats do not provide an accurate picture of this as there are several known problems relating to the data generated by these reports.
- Hits count has no real meaning
- Visitor count are distorted by search engines, bots, spiders and other irrelevant pings
- The relationship of one table to another often do not match making it difficult to analyse
- Behaviour of a visitor not really the concern of the server log
The really only value of web server stats are to monitor errors or search engine visits.
There is several good software packages available.
VisiStat – Real-time tracking with graphical and intuitive reporting features.
Google Analytics – Mentioned in our first list, Google offers free analytics software. Includes tight integration with AdWords (see also: 27 Features that Make Google Analytics Best of Breed). Unlike some enterprise apps, the stats are usually on a delay of a few hours.
mviSPY – Real-time analytics that track conversions and visitor identities.
Webstats BASIC – A free analytics program that tracks visitors and trends and has exportable reports.
Webstats PRO – A full-featured analytics package that includes click path analysis, campaign tracking, and complete traffic monitoring capabilities.
LoadStats – Provides two different packages that include basic page view and visitor tracking along with geo-location, ad tracking, and more.
Opentracker.net – Real-time visitor monitoring and web statistics.
eWebAnalytics – Comprehensive, free package that tracks unique visitors, conversions, average click-paths, traffic history, bounce rates, and virtually everything else that you could want in an analytics solution.
MetaTraffic – Web analytics program that installs quickly and has the ability to track ad campaigns, downloads, and multimedia file traffic.
clickdensity – Heat maps with real-time visitor data to help you optimize your link and ad placement and enhance your site’s stickiness.
nextSTAT – Complete analytics package that includes graphical visitor detail path reports.
ClickTale – Watch movies of what your visitors do while on your site, view heatmaps and every interaction that a visitor has on your site including hovers, hesitations, and even which form fields are causing visitors to leave.
ClickHeat – A free click heatmap generator.
“Source Mashable”
Understanding your data
Understanding the data is the most important aspect to Web Analytics. The data can gain an insight into what your visitor is really doing on your site and enables you to make changes accordingly. An example of this is what are the visitors looking at and then what do they do next. If they leave the site then without making a purchase then you will know that you have to look at why are they leaving. There is no right or wrong answer to the question as different sites provide different solutions.
Thing you should look for in your data are
- Where do your visitor go when they leave the site? “Competitive Site?”
- What page do they leave on?
- How long do they stay on site? “Less than 10 second is considered invalid data”
- how many pages did they view?
- What pages are getting viewed?
- What pages are not getting viewed?
- Is the visitor participating in your site? “Leaving comments, rating product”
- Making purchases from your site
Dig Deep
Often you need to dig deep to find the answers your looking for in your data. This takes careful analysis by trained professionals that understand the workings of the internet and web analytics. There can be lots of lies told in web data and true understanding is what makes this possible to find.
If you really need to understand what your visitors are doing on your site there are a small band of people who specialise in this field.
Good place to start is Web Analytics Association
