Tracking and Analyzing your Website Traffic - Part II (Reporting Visitor Statistics)

by George Prociuk
Pointafter.com

In Part I of Tracking and Analyzing your Website Traffic, we reviewed the two flavors of tracking software that are currently available. In Part II, we'll review the reporting aspect of tracking software. We'll give you our take on what kind of data your tracking software should provide and some ideas on how to use it.

I'm sure you've hear the old adage "Garbage in; garbage out". Reports are only as useful as the input data. Therefore, capturing the right information is key.  Given the right data, you will have the basis for some very actionable reporting.

Data Requirements
At a minimum, good tracking software should capture the following data:

• Who your visitors are (their IP address)
• When they visited your site (a date and time stamp)
• Which pages they visited
• Where they came from (the domain name)
• If they came via a search engine, which keywords did they use
• Hardware configuration (screen resolution)
• Software configuration (browser type and operating system)

The better tracking software will also record the following:

• Repeat visitor info (number of unique visits)
• Travel paths within your site
• JavaScript status
• Color Palettes
• Cookie Support

Calendar Information
When looking at calendar data, you'll want to review trends. This will require accumulating at least two or three months worth. The calendar reports that I find most informative tell me cumulative page views by day of week and cumulative page views by hours of day. Knowing when your site typically experiences traffic peaks and valleys is extremely useful in terms of launching new marketing campaigns. For example, if your busiest day of the week is Tuesday, wouldn't you want to make sure that any new marketing initiatives are installed by Monday nights, thus maximizing your promotion's exposure.

Knowing peaks and valleys by time of day is also an extremely valuable piece of information. For example, if you knew that your least busy time of day is usually between 3:00 am and 5:00 am, isn't that when you would prefer to make site modifications, thus minimizing your exposure in case you run into problems?

Hardware Environment
Knowing your visitor's hardware configurations, especially screen resolution, and using that information when designing your web pages will contribute greatly toward creating a satisfactory user experience.

For example, by tracking my visitor's screen resolution, I learned that 97% of all my visitors are viewing my site with a resolution of 800x600 or greater. This is information I can use to maximize the visual aspects of my site's usability.

Software Environment
Browser type and operating system are additional factors that determine how your visitors view your site. Knowing which browsers and operating systems your visitors use allows you to insure that your site is compatible with their software configuration.  

Visitor Behavior
Once visitors get to your site, what do they do? Knowing which pages on your site are most frequently visited and understanding your visitors "traffic patterns" is critical in terms of optimizing your site for usability and value. The key pieces of information you'll need are:

• Page views by page name
• Travel path info (which page was viewed next)
• Repeat visitor statistics (how many visitors are repeats vs. how many are new)

Understanding your site's traffic patterns will allow you to make informed decisions about changes to your site's content.

Search Engine Statistics
Everyone's favorite, the notorious search engines. Assuming that you have decent rankings, you'll want to know which keywords are being used to find your site and which pages those keywords are finding. Once search engine robots recognize your site as a regular stop on their web travels, they will follow the links from your home page to the subsidiary level pages in your site. Using their algorithms, they gather information about these pages in order to index and rank your site in their database.

Since I started keeping statistics (in December, 2001) on my visitors, over 900 different keywords have been used to access various pages of my site. The interesting aspect of this is that almost 80% of these visitors came to my site at a page other than the home page. To me, this reinforces the school of thought that each page on your site needs to be able to stand alone as an entry page.

Origin URL
As your site grows in value, other sites will add links to yours. Knowing where your visitors come from is especially valuable if you're paying for promotional links. Being able to assess the effectiveness of your paid promotions insures top value for your promotional expenses.

In Conclusion
Contrary to some schools of thought, collecting information about your visitors and their activities at your site should not be viewed as an intrusion on their privacy. As a webmaster, your goal is to develop your site into a useful and value added resource. Understanding visitor behavior plays a key roll in achieving that goal.