Web Analytics

1) Looking at the site usage, what do the terms visits, page views and pages/visit mean? What does the bounce rate mean and does it vary
much from day to day?

Visits:
The term visit refers to when someone enters a website to view its contents. A visit may consist of viewing several pages or a single one. Within a visit, a person can opt to view a single page or multiple pages, however within a single visit; there must not be any 30 minute gap between different pages.

Page views:
A page view happens when someone visits a page which is found on a website. A page view can concern any page that is found on the website and can be accessed by clicking on a link and the page itself can have other links as part of its contents.

Pages/Visit:
This is the statistics that describes the number of pages that are being viewed for each visit.

Bounce rate:
The bounce rate refers to the proportion of users that exit the website to go to different ones rather than continue browsing the same one. It varies fairly because it is a statistic affected by each visit made on the website.


2) Now look at the traffic sources report. What are the three sources of traffic and where has most of the traffic come from?

The three sources of traffic as at 04.09.10 are as follows:
1) Search engine 42.51%
2) Direct traffic 39.27%
3) Referring sites 18.21%

The most popular source of traffic is search engine with 42.51%

3) What was the most popular web browser used to access the site?

The most popular web browser used to access the site is Internet explorer with 46.51%


4) How many countries did visitors to Foliospaces come from and what were the top four countries?

The visitors to folio space came from 55 countries and the top four countries are Australia, United States, United Kingdom and Phillipine.



5) Having clicked every possible link on my analytics, make a few comments on (a) What you can track, (b) What you can track over time and (c) What you can’t track.

a) The items that can be tracked can be subdivided into five categories namely statistics for visitors, traffic source, content, site search, event tracking and goals. The table below shows the statistics that can be tracked.

Visitors: Benchmarking, Map Overlay, New vs. Returning, Languages, Visitor Trending, Visitor Loyalty, Browser Capabilities, Network Properties

Traffic: Direct Traffic, Referring Sites, Search Engines, All Traffic Sources, Keywords, AdWords

Content: Top Content,Content by Title, Content Drilldown,Top Landing Pages, Top Exit Pages, Site Overlay

Site search: Usage, Search Terms, Start Pages, Destination Pages, Categories, Trending

Event Tracking: Categories, Actions, Labels, Trending, Hostnames

Goals: Total Conversions, Conversion Rate, Goal Abandoned Funnels, Goal Value, Funnel Visualization

b) In relation to the statistics measuring the statistics over time, almost all of the above offer these facilities.


c) We cannot track the actual goal of the customers visiting the website and the demography of the users going on the website.






6) What do the following terms mean? These are just a few, you may like to add some more and perhaps include them on the Moodle glossary.

High bounce rate

This refers to a high proportion of people navigating away from the website without going to visit any additional pages on the website.

Key words

Key words are the words used on search engine that are helpful for accessing a website.

Average Page Depth

It is an analytics statistic which denotes how far internet users go in a certain website.

Click through rate

This refers to the statistic that shows the rate of users that have accessed the website by clicking through links from other website.

Click

A click refers to the act of using the mouse in order to follow a link that is found on a website. With a click, someone can navigate through the different options that are given to him/her on a website.

Cookie

Cookie refers to the data from a website that is kept in the computer’s memory via the web browser so that it can be used later on to access the website.

Impression

It is a statistics measuring the views of the advertising pop ups that are included on a particular website.


Hyperlink

A hyperlink refers to ‘a link from a hypertext file to another location or file; typically activated by clicking on a highlighted word or icon at a particular location on the screen’ (http://wordnetweb.princeton.edu/perl/webwn?s=hyperlink)

Navigation

It refers to the process of browsing among websites on the internet. It can also refer to a single site only.

Pageview

A Pageview refers to ‘accessing or merely seeing a Web page as opposed to other methods that count many elements per page’. (www.wnd.com/mediakit/glossary.asp)

Session

The term session refers to the time someone spends on a website to view its contents. A session may consist of viewing several pages or a single one up to the time that the person decides to end his visit by exiting the website, stop using the internet or computer or inactivity lasting more than half an hour.

Unique Visitors (or Absolute Unique Visitors)

It is a statistic that is used to provide an identity to a user that visits the website over a certain specific time period. Each visitor will have one of these during a certain time period.

URL

URL which stands for Uniform Resource Locator refers to the address for a website or any other item on the internet.

Visitor

A visitor refers to the user that enters and browses through a website. This is the term that identifies each website user from each other.

Visitor Session

It refers to the ‘interaction by a site visitor. The session ends when the visitor leaves the site’. (www.formicmedia.com/sem-glossary.htm)

Comparison shopping

It refers to the act of comparing different product or service according to their price and quality before purchasing the latter.