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Website Analytics
By David Sanders, WebsiteDevelopingTricks.com
Users often like to browse through different websites. But, there should be some way to study the influence of users on the website. This can be done using website analytics. In other words, website analysis is a process to measure the business goals of the website.
The main purpose of website analytics is to see whether the site is functioning properly or not. The information required for website analytics can be collected using the methods - Logfile Analysis and Page Tagging.
Different records are required for website analytics such as, number of visitors visited the site, the key words given by the users, the duration of visiting the web site by the user, the links visited by the user within that website. Based on these records, website analytics provide information regarding individual user activity:
- Where the user came from?
- Which user agent (browser) is the user visiting your site with?
- How the users browse through the website?
- What are the most frequently visited pages?
- What are the most frequently entry pages?
- What are the most frequently exit pages?
Logfile Analysis
In Logfile Analysis, all the statistics are stored in a logfile and contains records reading the logfile. The statistics include number of client requests on the web server.
Advantages of Logfile Analysis:
Logfile Analysis has become a popular method due to the following advantages:
- User can avail all information properly after creating the Logfile
- All the transactions are recorded in the Web Server
- Log files record the failed transactions. So, it is easier to track the failed transactions.
Page Tagging
Page Tagging method improves the logfile analysis when caching is present. Cookies are assigned to the user. These cookies help to identify the users at the time of visiting the site.
Advantages of Page Tagging:
The advantages of Page Tagging are as follows:
- Every time the user views the page, Java script starts running
- Additional information like user’s screen size can be added easily to the JavaScript.
Besides these two technologies, some other methods are also used as website analytics:
Hybrid Methods:
This is a combination of Logfile Analysis and Page Tagging. The objective is to collect more accurate information.
Some of the common terms used in website analytics are:
- Hit: This term is used when a web server requests for a file.
- Page View: This term is used to define the page that is requested and viewed. It may include multiple hits. The page includes web files with extensions (.html, .htm, .asp, .php), documents (word document, excel sheet or PDF documents), text files etc.
- Visit/Session: This term is used when a user requests for a page for a specific time out.
- Visitor: End user who is viewing the site.
- Repeat Visitor: User who has more than one visit to that site
- New Visitor: User who is visiting the site for the first time
Useful steps for website analytics:
- Collect Data: The user first needs the necessary records to analyze the site. This can be done using any web analysis tool. The data includes web logs, CGI logs, and ‘form to email requests.
- Transform Data: Converting Web logs into common log are not efficient method. So we need to transform the data in a easily manipulated format.
- Analyze the data: This is the most important thing. The user needs
to know the following issues:
- The popular pages
- Average time for the users to stay in one page
- The source of end users
- Planning for improvement: After the analysis, the user must develop a plan to improve the site. For example, if one user is not visiting any particular link, then try to find the reason for it and improve it.
- Inspire Readers: After changes, it should be attractive to the user.
All information is stored in the web server in two formats – Common Log Format and Combined Log Format.
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