WebTrends™ Overview - Understanding Your Activity Report
To help our clients* answer such questions as - Where are your website visitors coming from? How are they navigating your website? How long are they staying and when are they leaving?, Falcon-Software uses WebTrends Site Analysis software. WebTrends is one of the most powerful and comprehensive website management tools available on the market.
WebTrends generates a file that documents all activity on your site, including; number of visits and average visit length; top entry and exit pages; top downloaded files; most active day of the week and time of day; top referring search engines and keywords; top browsers and platforms.
The report includes a plethora of numbers, percentages and statistics which can be overwhelming to any user. To use this report most effectively, I suggest selecting a few key metrics and comparing them over several months. This will allow you to follow the trends and determine your websites strengths and weakness. The metrics you choose will depend on the goals of your website and marketing campaigns.
For example, if you run marketing campaigns to drive traffic to specific pages within your website, you can find indicators of a its success or lack of success by examining your Top Entry Pages. Have these pages moved up in the rankings from before and after the campaign? Have they dropped? Are they on the list at all?
The reports are stored for one year. They are updated once a day and closed at the end of each month. To view the statistics, for a whole month, do not view them on the last day of the month, wait until the month has ended. If you view them on the last day of the month, they will not include the statistics for that day.
How you access your WebTrends activity report depends on your website setup. If you do not know how to access your report,
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Outlined below are some of the key metrics provided in the reports that can help you in understanding the effectiveness of your website and online marketing campaigns.
General Statistics:
Hits
Don't be fooled by this number! A hit is a single action on the Web server. A visitor downloading a single file is logged as a single hit, while a visitor requesting a Web page including two images registers as three hits on the server; one hit is the request for the .html page, and two additional hits are requests for the downloaded image files. While the volume of hits is an indicator of Web server traffic, it is not an accurate reflection of how many pages are being looked at.
Visits
Number of times a visitor came to your site.
Average Visit Length
Average length of visits (okay, that one was obvious).
Visitors Who Visited Once
Number of individual visitors who appear only once in the log file. Individuals can be tracked by IP addresses, domain names, and cookies. Cookies provide the most accurate count.
Visitors Who Visited More Than Once
Number of individual visitors who appear more than once in the log file. Individuals can be tracked by IP addresses, domain names, and cookies. Cookies provide the most accurate count.
Resources Accessed:
Top Pages
Pages with good content and design are more likely to attract visitors and be revisited. Less popular pages on a site can be made more appealing by improving the content or incorporating design elements similar to that on the more important pages. Average view times can help determine which content is most important to your visitors.
Top Entry Pages
This information can indicate how you might want to optimize the architecture of your Web site based on where your visitors are entering. It can also help you determine which external links are most effective.
Top Exit Pages
You can use this information to determine your visitors' satisfaction with their visits. Visitors may have left after viewing a specific page because they found what they were looking for, lost interest, determined the content didn't apply to them, or for many other reasons. If your top exit page is your home page, this may be an indication that you are alienating a lot of first-time visitors.
Most Downloaded Files
This information shows you the most popular downloadable files on your Web site. Files that don't appear on the list, or appear low on the list, may require maintenance such as decreasing the file size, improving link placement, or elimination to make room for more popular content.
Visitors & Demographics:
Visitors By Number of Visits
This information can indicate whether or not your site compels visitors to return. Updating Web site content is one way to draw return visitors.
Most Active Countries, North American States & Provinces, Most Active Cities
These metrics can help you meet the needs of your target audience as well as discover new audiences.
Activity Statistics:
By Day of Week, By Hour of Day
Days and hours of less activity should be considered good days for maintenance and content improvement.
Referrers & Keyword:
Top Referring Sites & URLs
You can use this information to determine the sites that provide the most referrals to your site. This can help when considering the most effective ways to attract visitors.
Top Search Engines, Phrases, Keywords
This information can give you an idea how your meta-tags are performing with each search engine. How are people getting to your site? Are visitors using the search phrases/keywords you expect? Do you need to use different keywords in page titles to make it easier for people to find your site with search engines?
Browsers & Platforms:
Top Browsers
Browser data can help you determine how to configure your site for optimal viewing.
* If you are not hosting with Falcon-Software, WebTrends may not be available to you. Check with your hosting company to find out what website analysis software they use.
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