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Analyzing Website Visitor Reports
Often the free hit reports provided by Web hosting services
give marketing people a desire to say, "Thanks for nothing,"
because, for example, it doesn't help to know that 54 people from
251.257.139.32 visited your site. On the other hand, if your sales
team has told you that Honeywell is a major prospect, you'd be
glad to know that 54 people from Honeywell had visited your Website. To get truly useful information in an easy to use format,
you're going to need either NetTracker or WebTrends Log Analyzer.
Once you get the right software, and a truly helpful report,
here are key items to look for and what they mean to you. First,
forget about hits and look at how many unique visitors you had
to your site. If cookies are enabled on your site, then your report
will show the cookies of your visitors. If cookies are not enabled,
then your software should at least, as in the example above, try
to tell you that "x" number of visitors were from Honeywell,
as opposed to a numerical (IP) address. In visitor report lingo,
you want to know what the top referring sites are.
If your visitor report persists in telling you that an important
number of unique visitors came from an IP address, you can try
looking up the IP address. Just go to a source such as www.netsol.com
click on WHOIS, click on the radio button "IP address"
and type in the IP address. For example, type in 129.17.254.12
and you'll learn that's a Honeywell server managed out of Tempe,
Arizona.
If a search engine generated the visitor, you'll want to know
what key words or phrases your visitors used in order to find
your site. With that information in mind, you may want to change
some of your META tags, rewrite the wording on various Web pages,
and re-register your site with those search engines which are
not providing you with much traffic. In addition to learning about
top referring sites, you'll want to look at top URL's – the
specific Web page that people were on before they arrived at your
home page.
While you're thinking about visitors, take a look at what kind
of operating system or "platform" your visitors were
using -- Windows 95, 98, Mac PowerPC, etc. You can also learn
which browser version your visitors are using -- IE and Netscape
being the two leaders. This information is a must-know for your
Website programmers because it can have a direct impact on how
they program the site. If you cross reference this information
with other things you know about your target markets, you may
also get either an affirmation that your marketing analysis is
correct or some questions you need to ask about your perceived
market and the actual visitors to your Website.
In addition to knowing a lot about your visitors, you want to
know, of course, what they're doing once they're on your Website.
Your visitor report should tell you a great deal: what days of
the week your site is most and least active, the median length
of a visitor's stay, the most and least popular Web pages, the
pages people first arrive on, and the pages people leave the site
from. If you have downloadable files on your site – PDF files
are a good example – you can find out exactly how many times,
for example, your online registration form was downloaded.
A Website's technical report will include all kinds of errors,
from "client errors" (problems your visitor had with
his/her PC/MAC/ISP) to "page not found" errors. You'll
want your Website programmer to study the technical report because
it's one measure of the technical functionality of the Website.
A worthwhile visitor report can run 25 pages, with enough charts
and graphs included to enable even only a mildly compulsive person
to study up for an hour or more. The goal, then, is to identify
the key facts you care about, assess those quickly and share the
report with the appropriate staff, from sales to Website programmers
to information systems people. When you do, instead of having
that "Thanks for nothing," feeling, you'll be thanked.
This article first appeared as a column written
by Dave Tedlock, NetOutcomes' president, for the Inside Tucson
Business, The New Mexico Business Weekly and the Idaho
Business Review.
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