From Page Views to Bounce

Rates: The Fundamentals of

Website Analytics
So here's something we‘ll
like to announce as a
preamble...
 
Quite unlike anything in the past,
businesses now can get 'live' data
from their website and can use  this
to improve their operations

 
But most businesses suck at
knowing what to do
with this ‘live’ data
Like Big time
And thats why Web analytics is a
‘much in demand’ skill.
How can studying data can
help you run your business
better
And why are managers not doing it
currently
Even if you don’t see job titles
for ‘Web Analytics’, this is a
very useful additional skill to
have
Especially if you have been around for a
couple of years in the ‘web’ industry.
So what really do
Analytics guys do
They use web analytics data to help make
business decisions based on concrete data
and historical
trends. Before this, a lot of these decisions
were done just based on that dangerous
thing called ‘gut feel’ 
What's the difference between a visitor and
a visit?  What's the difference between
frequency and recency?

This is stuff which a Web Analytics

professional should have ready answers
to.
Formal Definition ??

Web Analytics is the measurement, collection,

analysis and reporting of Internet data for the purposes of
understanding and optimizing Web usage.
- Web Analytics Association

We know what you’re thinking…

What’s that supposed to mean ????

Lets get a perspective first

JavaScript
JavaScript Tags
Tags

Log
Log Files
Files &
&
Hit
Hit Counters
Counters

Click & heat Mobile

maps Analytics
11
And see what web analytics helps us to measure

Who are your visitors? Improve ROI

• Country/city
• Browser/OS data How do they reach your website?
• New/Repeat • From which site?
• Which campaign works better? What are they doing..?
• What SEO/SEM keywords work? • Are they converting?
• How long do they stay on your site?
• What do they read?
• What’s making them leave?
• …much more

12
Some common tools

13
 What the Top 500 online retailers are using...

24% use at least 2 solutions

on their site

Date source: Internet Retailer Top 500 Retail Web Sites

Date: January 2008
Sites: 500 14
Data points: 793
http://www.internetretailer.com/Top500/list.asp
Which are the metrics which
you need to watch out for
Revealed : Why MBA’s hate Analytics : There are too many metrics !!
But this is what must be monitored

 Pts from Neha

Businesses usually stop at
just setting up analytics

That’s where it is supposed to begin.

Show std analytics snapshot
Some very relevant analysis
can be done
 The source of visitors to your site can be
studied

Social Media Direct type- Partner

ins Sites/
Social Referrals
Bookmarks Browser
Bookmarks E-PRs
Banner Search Engines
Advertizing/M Organic | SEM
edia
E-Mailers

21
SEM campaign can be optimized

22
 PPC: Showing the Right Creative

Ad Text is as important in qualifying visitors as search term. Measurement

can help you find the truly optimal combinations.
Google Ad Optimization versus Proxy Conversion Optimization

% of time
Conversion shown by
AdGroup Ad CTR Rate Google Which Ad
3 0.49% 2.80% 35.46% should I
A 4 0.51% 1.72% 55.49% really use?
2 0.31% 16.67% 1.01%
B 4 0.43% 0.42% 57.17%
3 0.05% 1.39% 46.04%
C 4 0.05% 3.39% 46.31%

3 0.30% 0.00% 32.41% Optimizing Ad Creative by

D 4 0.29% 5.56% 33.37% click-through is like a flipping a
3 0.37% 2.67% 14.03%
coin. You’ll be wrong half-the-
4 0.44% 1.46% 49.52%
time.
F 5 0.47% 2.52% 17.82%

23
 SEO campaign can be optimized

•Identify weak SE’s, keywords to work on

•Gain insights to visitor’s intent (eg.: ‘course’ vs ‘institute’ shows more focus on
subject/content than brand)
•Analysis of Organic traffic helps strategize SEM campaign 24
 SEO: Finding Opportunities

Measurement can help you find SEO opportunities and discipline an SEO
program.
Where
should I
  Pages in Group
Search Engine
Source Google % Yahoo % MSN %
focus SEO
Database Pages 6,210 81,534 78.0% 12.2% 0.5%
efforts?
Index Page 1 8,037 40.9% 22.5% 20.5%

Overall Site 100,000+ 7,670,974 41.1% 32.8% 7.9%

.. .

25
 Optimizing to the Right Measures

Paying for many clicks (and SEO optimizations) is a total waste. Measuring
the quality of visitors is the only way to understand what really works.
What keywords
actually
% of Qualification1 Qualification2 produce?
Search Term Type Visits Rate Rate Drop-off
Type 1 Words 30.9% 12.2% 5.1% 58.4%
Type 2 Words 36.6% 23.0% 10.7% 53.7%
Type 3 Words 19.2% 53.4% 39.1% 26.7%
Type 4 Words 13.4% 36.1% 20.4% 43.5%

26
 Internal Search Optimization

On-Site (internal) What do visitors

Search is a critical search on and
component of actual where do they
site performance. go from search?
But it’s analysis is
complex because it
routes to so many
places.

27
And ‘advanced’ features can
be implemented
For example, goals of users can be tracked

Secondary Goals Primary Goals 29

 
Coming to the vendors, the main
vendors are Google Analytics,
CoreMetrics, Websidestory,
Omniture, Web trends.
Google Analytics changed the
landscape completely when it
launched a free package in 2005
 Vendor Profile: Omniture

Type of Offering
 Tag-Based
www.omniture.co
 Analytics very robust m
 Rich 3rd Party integration
 Current Market Leader
 Complex implementation

Appropriate For:
 Larger companies looking for the safest-bet in analytics.
 Combines solid reporting and analytics – strength in almost every area.
 Analytically inclined companies.
 Expensive & support is not considered good.

31
 Google Analytics

Type of Offering:
 Tag-Based www.google.com/analyti
 Modest Reporting and Limited Analytics cs/
 Low-range offering with easy implementation and very
attractive GUI.

Appropriate For:
 Modest web sites not requiring lots of vendor support.
 Sites that are limited in their analytic needs or heavily focused
on PPC.
 Companies new to web measurement.

32
So should I get into this ?
The future’s bright

“Web Analytics is hard.”

– Eric Peterson

“10% of your budget should be spent on tools,

while 90% spent on people (brains) who will
be responsible for insights.”
– Avanash Kaushik
 Basic skills which employers would
look out for
Great with nos and Good data pattern
recognition skills.

Basic html and javascript skills so that you can

work with any nagging issues during analytics
set-up and maintenance.
 
Basic skills which employers would look
out for
Ability
to communicate findings to the business in terms it
can understand.

Familiarity with the main Analytics packages.

Capabilityto understand what data needs to be tracked for

the business to grow. This requires experience of a few
years, does not come easily.

Expertise in report design and configuration

 An actual job description
Analyzes Website performance, trends and click stream path analysis activity to provide
data driven business insights, leading to fundamental improvements to the Website
experience.

Demonstrates a high degree of pro-activeness in analysing customer behavior using

available data to influence changes on the Website.

Day-to-day management of analytics system to ensure tracking, reporting and analytics

are functioning optimally.

Creates and maintains key reports, dashboards and analysis utilizing WebTrends and
SQL.

Identify and track trends in metrics and be able to identify improvements to Website based
on usage and traffic patterns.

Perform Search Engine Optimization and advise on search and display ads

Conducts ad-hoc traffic, sales and testing analysis of the site.

What if you are not from the
SEO/SEM/SMO
Case Study : Google
Analytics
Some Advantages of Google Analytics

Key points
 Extremely simple ‘user-friendly’ interface
 Compatible with Google Adwords or Adsense
 ‘Goal oriented’ analysis & ‘Intelligence’
 Correlate data across reports
 Customizable Reports
 Free 40
Google Analytics jobs have increased
more than those for Omniture

Source :
WebWorkerdaily.com
Account Settings Page

42
 Profiles and Accounts

Profiles Accounts

•Create a new account for each website

•Create Profiles within Accounts - to track
different visit segments, create access levels or
website sections
•Can link 1 AdWords to 1 Analytics Account
•‘Admin’ access is at Account level

43
 The Code:
Generating and Implementing

•Place within ‘body’ of web page

•Place on ALL pages within the website
44
 Reported Segments

Google
Analytics
collects your
data based on 5
broad segments
…Which give us over 80
primary reports, which can
be further drilled down to
over 1,000 unique reports.

45
 Data Representation

Easily export/email a report

•4 format options, incl. PDF,
XML, CSV & TSV
Graph
•Day/week/month views
•Compare 2 metrics
•‘Compare to site’
•Compare date ranges
•Highlight data point on
mouse-over

Data table
•Overview of selected
component
•5 unique data views
•Search box to
include/exclude specific data
•Easily compare performance
to Site Avg.

46
More slides from Neha