Using Your Web Statistics

Autumn, 2001

Most of the basic information generated by a traffic log or statistics package includes data on visitors, software, page accesses, domains and errors. Some packages also generate data on search engine referrals. This summary will overview the typical information found in each of these subject areas, as well as present ideas to help you interpret this data. If your site uses cookies to track web activity, you have an even richer source of information to help you analyze the performance of your web site. In the broadest terms, even the most basic statistics collect data on user activity, which may present a privacy concern to the visitors of your site.

Visitors
Visitors are not the same as page hits. Visitors refers to the number of individual users accessing your site, regardless of their entry page, or the number of pages viewed during an individual browsing session. According to Nielsen/Netratings, the average web user spends about 30 minutes on a given web site and about a minute on an individual web page.

Day of Week or Date
This statistic is one of the most useful for marketing purposes. Analyze your most heavily visited days to see if they correspond to the release of advertising, direct mail, newsletter distribution, etc. If they do, consider refinements and modifications to promotional efforts that use your web site more fully to reduce your promotion costs. Compliment distribution efforts with email that contains embedded links directly to web pages on your site.

Alternately, analyze your schedule for web updates. There may be a pattern to your users' visits that present ideas for the best days to release new information, drop traditional mailings or conduct web-based events.

Time of Day
Time of day can augment the information gleaned from Day of Week data. You may find a pattern to the time your users log on to your site. Analyze these times to identify opportunities for appointment-based events or information. The more you know about when visitors are on your site, the more productive your site can be for communications and marketing purposes.

Software
This data reports the operating system (OS) and web browsers your site visitors are using. This information is key to any web redesign or site function enhancement. Ensure the features and functionality of your site are accessible by the OS and web browsing software your audience is using. The html version specifications and special features of each browser are available from the manufacturer's web site.

Page Accesses
Page access data shows you which web content is most popular with the visitors of your site. It tells you which pages are viewed most frequently and which pages are rarely viewed. Analyze this information in any site enhancement projects that you may be considering. Your site visitors are telling you the type of information they want as well what they don't want. You may find that you are using resources to create or maintain content no one is using.

Depending on the software used to create your statistics, your page access data might actually be file access data. This type of data reports the most popular files, not just pages on your web site. Therefore, you may find system files, such as style sheets or graphics files, such as navigation elements, reported as your most popular files. Keep this in mind as you are reviewing your data.

Domains
This refers to the top-level domain name of the Internet access provider your visitors are using. It tells you where your users are originating, and which method of internet access they are using. For example, some sites may receive many hits from dot gov (.gov) domain names, meaning the site is access frequently by United States government personnel. Or, you may see dot edu (.edu) domain names, indicating your site is being used by university or college personnel. Sometimes, international domains, such as dot au (.au; Australia) or dot ca (.ca; Canada) will be found in your statistics. (For a complete list of international domains, see the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority web site index.)
Most frequently, you'll see .com and .net domain names. Most of these will be from the Internet access providers in your area. Use the information from the domain area to:

• Insure your pages and features work properly for the most popular access methods (i.e., aol and webtv domains)
• Take advantage of any promotion or traffic generating opportunities presented by the domain (i.e., aol domains and the AOL search engine, msn domains and the MSN search engine, or separate geographic or customer indexes or directories provided by the domain)
• Review industry-specific or competitor information presented by the domain
• Analyze opportunities for subscriptions, promotions or partnerships with the owners of popular domains
• Some statistics reports reference Unresolved Domains. These names are those which are reported by numerical IP address. Some Internet access providers use this identifier rather than their domain name. Large amounts of traffic coming from the same numerical IP address can be identified by an IP address lookup found at the American Registry for Internet Numbers (ARIN).

Errors
Common error messages

• 400 - Bad Request - the web server did not understand the user's request, for any number of reasons ranging from a typographical error to a system glitch.
• 401 - Unauthorized - the user attempted to access password-protected information without a password
• 403 - Forbidden - the user attempted to access information for which he or she did not have permission to access
• 404 - File not found. The most common error; means anything from an isolated error in individual web documents, to entire documents that have been moved or deleted.

Error 401 and 404 are the most useful in determining site improvements. Numerous 401 error messages could indicate a marketing or revenue opportunity, an improvement in the online registration procedure or site architecture or simply the addition of some help documents. 404 error messages usually indicate broken links within your site, whether they are elements on individual pages, or entire pages that have been eliminated or moved.

Keep in mind that many users bookmark particular pages within your site for their personal convenience. Whenever redesigning or moving pages, check your page access statistics to determine the most popular pages on your site. For those heavily trafficked pages, try to keep the URL the same in any site update. If a URL change is unavoidable, provide a redirect or pointer to the new page to make it easy for your user to update their bookmarks.

Search Engine Referrals
Which search engine or web directory is providing the most traffic to your site? If your statistics provide this data, it's easy to determine where you should focus your site marketing efforts. This data will also point to areas you could improve on, by identifying the important search engines and directories (see Focus Summer 2001) not driving traffic to you site. This could indicate that your site has not been submitted, your site is not produced in a manner that the search engines effectively catalog, or that the search engine is not one that is popular with your audience.

This is only an overview of the many ways to collect, analyze and utilize web statistics. Make it a practice to review the performance of your site at least once per month to identify ideas, trends and problems. For an in-depth analysis of what your site is telling you, contact us.