Welcome to Issue 24 of Web Marketing Today, sent to about 13,324 subscribers around the globe. With this issue we celebrate the beginning of the second year of publication of Web Marketing Today. You, our loyal readers, have made this possible. Thanks so much for your support.
One of the best ways to improve your Web site marketing is to
analyze the existing traffic to your Web site. Until you understand
who is coming and why, it'll be difficult to improve. There four
ways to analyze Web site traffic:
Install a counter on your Web page
Use your ISP's statistical package
Purchase Web traffic analysis software
Employ an outside firm to audit your Web traffic
We'll look briefly at the first three options
Install a counter on your Web page
A counter announces to everyone one who visits, "You are
the 107th person to visit Aquatic Aerodrome Ltd." Of course, you could
tweak the odometer so it says, "You are the 100,007th person
to visit Aquatic Aerodrome Ltd." Either way, a counter isn't very professional.
You don't want people to be embarrassed for you, nor do you want
them to think you're a liar. There are ways to put the
counter where only you can see it, not the world at large,
but there are much better ways to count visitors.
Use your ISP's statistical package
Your Internet Service Provider (ISP) keeps log files which record
every single "hit" (request for a Web page or graphic)
on your Web site. This is a sample of a raw access log file entry
in NCSA combined log file format:
cache.is.co.za - - [18/Oct/1996:02:49:22 -0700] "GET /articles/bannerad.htm
HTTP/1.0" 200 9657 "http://www.ca-probate.com/comm_net.htm"
"Mozilla/3.0 (Win95; I) via Squid Cache version 1.0.17"
Here you see a Web surfer from a domain in South Africa (that
is what the .za stands for), who
requested (GET) a Web page (/articles/bannerad.htm - in this case,
my article "Using Banner Ads to Promote Your Web Site")
on October 18. He was referred to my Web page from a link on a
California Estate Planning Web page (http://www.ca-probate.com/comm_net.htm)
which had linked to this article. He used a Netscape 3.0 Web browser
("Mozilla" was an early name for what became the Netscape
browser) on a Windows 95 platform.
While it doesn't give you someone's actual e-mail address (the domain name is as close as you get), the log file tells you
a great deal about how people are getting to your Web site, and
what they find when they get there.
Your ISP is quite likely to have installed a freeware version
of a popular statistical analysis package. There are several very
good ones which come with some documentation you may find useful.
Analog,
written by Stephen Turner, of the University of Cambridge Statistical
Laboratory
Getstats,
written by Kevin Hughes of Enterprise Integration Technologies.
See also an explanation of getstats statistics
I wrote for my clients.
wwwstat,
written by Roy Fielding of the University of California, Irvine.
Your ISP can program his computer so it will produce a
report daily, weekly, monthly, etc. Statistics on your Web site
may be posted on a Web page, or perhaps e-mailed to you. Contact
your ISP and ask how to access system statistics. If statistics
are not available, ask "Why not?" Insist. Business-friendly ISPs offer this
service free of charge to their customers; others try to bill
you for it, while smiling broadly.
Here's some of the information that the Analog program reports
about my Web site:
Analysed requests from Mon-21-Oct-1996 02:06 to Mon-28-Oct-1996
02:05 (7.0 days).
Total completed requests: 94 617 Average completed requests per day: 14 517 Total failed requests: 947 Total redirected requests: 2 367 Number of distinct files requested: 783 Number of distinct hosts served: 5 870 Number of new hosts served in last 7 days: 5 843 Total data transferred: 522 446 kbytes Average data transferred per day: 75 635 kbytes
Let's look more carefully. All in all there were 94 thousand "hits"
recorded for that week. But wait a moment: a "hit" is
any request for a file or graphic. Since each page has several
graphics, this can be misleading. Then again, the visitor may
look at several Web pages on a visit. So a much more important
statistic is the 5,870 "distinct hosts served," indicating
that I had approximately 5,870 different visitors that week. I
say approximately, since if a person came back a second time that
week, they would probably be recorded as a different entity, but
this gives us a pretty good idea.
Finally, you see that about 75 MB of data is downloaded every
day -- Web pages as well as graphics. Depending upon how much
your ISP charges for "traffic" (the total amount of
downloads per day or per month), this figure can have important
monetary implications for you.
What's next? Analog tells me that I get the most visitors around
noon and the least about 2 am, that the frequency of visitors
is least on Saturday and Sunday, and most on Tuesday. (Not very vital, I suppose.)
I am always fascinated by the Domain Report, though it
doesn't have a lot to do with marketing strategy. The report lists
data in four columns: percent of total requests, percent of total bytes downloaded,
number of kilobytes downloaded, and number of requests. First
off you can see that nearly 20% of the visitors used a numerical
domain address (the IP number of their ISP's computer), and 30%
of the domains ended in "dot com". The rest are from
all over the world.
With 5,800 "distinct hosts," this goes on for page after
page. Let's say you wanted to see if your competitor was studying
your Web site. You'd look for his domain name (unless he's using
only his IP number to disguise his presence).
A Browser Report reveals that fully 95% of the visitors
to my Web site that week used some version of a Netscape browser.
The next most popular browser was Mosaic with half a percent.
Microsoft Internet Explorer came in with about a quarter of one
percent, followed by the American Online browser. Guess which
browsers I take most seriously in designing Web sites.
The Request Report, however, is the most helpful of all.
It tells exactly how many requests or "hits" were made
for each Web page, cgi program, and image file. For example, here
is the report on various articles from my Web site:
In the past six months a whole new genre of software has been produced
which provides detailed analysis of Web traffic right on your desktop computer. To perform an
analysis, you download the access logs from your ISP's computer via FTP to
your own hard disk. (Ask your ISP in what directory your log files can be
found.) The analysis software will typically "parse"
or interpret the raw log file line by line, and place the various
elements into separate fields in a relational database.
Perhaps I'll find some clues to why "12 Decisions" gets
so many hits. I load up the 30-day evaluation version of Intersé Webmarket Focus 2
and begin to
play. Whee! All sorts of analyses are available with the ability
to filter information for any single Web page, surfer domain name,
referral source, etc. I do a traffic analysis for my "12
Decisions" page to see which are the main Web sites which
refer surfers to that article.
Yahoo's Web design and layout category, 23% (31% total from
Yahoo)
Infoseek, 4.5%
Not a complete answer perhaps, but helpful. I also
learned that 51% of the people who visit my Web Marketing Info
Center come from Infoseek search engine. Interesting. I also learned
that American Online subscribers made up the largest single group
of visitors to my Web site (5.6%, though nearly all used the Netscape
browser), a clue to some of the customers I need to cater to.
While large corporations can spend $5,000 or more for high end
solutions, several software packages -- with varying degrees of
power -- may be within reach of the smaller serious Webmarketer:
Market Focus 2 (standard edition)
from Intersé,
$695. An excellent product!
So why are Web traffic statistics important? you ask, after
enduring a rather technical explanation. Just this: they make
you a much more savvy marketer by telling you:
Which Web pages are most popular, which are least used
Who is visiting your Web site
Which Web browsers to optimize your Web pages for
Which Web search engines are most useful to you, and which
are the least useful
Which banner ads are bringing the most visitors
Where errors or bad links may be occurring in your Web pages
In short, traffic analysis allows you to ask questions which help
you fine-tune your Web marketing strategy. Web marketing without statistical analysis is like learning to drive blindfolded.
At best, ineffective, at worst, dangerous.
[Note: I answer questions on these matters for my clients only.
Please refer questions to your ISP or Web page designer.]
It was an auspicious beginning in that you took time out of your family vacation to meet
with me in an Anaheim coffeshop. There, you not only patiently helped me design a Web
site, but also counseled me on aspects of a business and marketing plan.
Throughout the development of my web site, you served as consultant, mentor and advisor.
You combined intuition and creative talent with a keen sense of the Internet as an
emerging communication and business medium. Your genuine interest, enthusiasm, warmth
and sense of humor made our working relationship a pleasant collaboration. Best of all,
our hard work is already beginning to pay dividends! Thanks again. -- Mark Weinberg
Mark Weinberg is the principal of Jobs In Government the Internet source for listing and finding public sector jobs. It promises to help both government workers as well as state and local governments and schools.
We have the following issues of Web Marketing Today available for sponsorship: December 9, 1996 (14,250 estimated circulation) and January 6, 1996 (15,250 estimated circulation). See our sponsorship page for more details.
Analyzing Your Web Site Traffic
