What Is Web Analytics
Recently I was planning a vacation and looking at various airline destinations at one of the major online ticketing sites. After trying two or three different options, the site asked me to login or register. I found this frustrating because it disturbed my process of vacation planning. It was also requesting personal information for a process that I wanted to assume was relatively anonymous. So I took time out to send the site designers an email with my thoughts: the other ticketing sites do not require registration for browsing, and I was tempted to use those sites to avoid the hassle of registering. I went to look for tickets again a few days later and found that I no longer had to register to search more than three times. Most sites are not lucky enough to get explicit user feedback. The nature of the web makes it easy for visitors to find you, but also for them to find similar sites. If they get frustrated or cannot seem to make your site work the way they want to, get confused or
Most people are introduced to web analytics by the ever-popular hit counter, a simple bit of code that counts and displays the number of visits to a web page. More sophisticated web analytics track the number of unique IP addresses visiting a site, count views for every page, break down results based on hour and day, show which countries the visitors are from, what browsers and operating systems they are using, and which links or search engine terms they used to find the site. One of the most popular web analytics services is AW Stats, which is available for free with most hosts. Web analytics are important to anyone who cares about who visits their site and how they got there. Traffic can make or break the success of an online business or venture. Smart site owners write pages that are rich in relevant keywords and score well for Google searches on related topics. If you look at the articles on this site carefully, you’ll notice that relevant keywords are intentionally repeated freque
If you’re serious about using your Web site to attract business and serve existing customers, you need to go beyond the simple traffic counter. Web site analysis tools can track the myriad ways people use your Web site, while making sense of the mountain of data your site generates. Using google_ad_client = ‘pub-2905054723170537’; // substitute your client_id (pub-number) google_ad_channel = ‘3393335763’; google_ad_output = ‘js’; google_max_num_ads = ‘3’; google_ad_type = ‘text’; google_feedback = ‘on’; google_targeting = “content”; these tools, you can discover: • How many users visit your site, how many return, and how often • How users are navigating through your site • Where in the “conversion funnel” or purchasing process they’re getting stuck and leaving • What content your visitors are looking for, and whether they’re finding it • Exactly which form fields are driving people away rather than bringing them in Site analytics differs from Web site optimization, which is the process
