The importance of analytics
by Tom on April 4, 2008
in Technology
We all want our website to be working hard for us. We talk about SEO and the importance of it. We spend money on advertising campaigns. We spend hours generating content. Despite all of this we may see no evidence of progress. We may not be getting any more sales or even leads than normal but whilst that lets us know something is not right, it does not allow us to drill down any further. The solution is tracking our site statistics, known as analytics.
How do we track?
If we are asking this sort of basic question, then I would suggest we look at some basic solutions. The first option is to use the statistics provided by your web host. These are typically part of a package such as Awstats or Webalizer and can be found under Web/FTP Stats on your hosting control panel. Different packages will provide more or less detailed reports and some will be more graphic than others. Most people prefer the simple, prettier, more graphic option as it is easier on the eyes. One thing about analytics is that it can be as detailed and complex as you are willing to go. More about that later.
Another great option for tracking stats is using Google’s free tool called Google Analytics. This is my choice. It works by placing a small piece of JavaScript on the bottom of your page then it produces very pretty stats. This tool can be used to monitor basic stats with very little effort, but it also has the power to monitor more complex stats. It can be used to see conversion rates and also integrates with Google Adwords. There are many different analytics packages out there, some are free some are not.
What to track – the basics
Visits – This is the total number of visits
Visitors – This is the number of unique visitors. It is the number of visits adjusted for repeat visitors.
Page views – This is the total number of pages your visitors have viewed. In advertising terms, this would be the number of impressions.
Pages/Visit – This is how many pages the average visitor looks at. If this is close to one, it means people are not exploring your site much. It is the number ofpage views divided by the number of visits.
Bounce rate – The percentage of visitors who leave without visiting another page.
Average time on site – Pretty self explanatory. If this is low then maybe you need to rework your site design. Make it easier for visitors to find something of interest in order to keep them on your site.
% new visits – This one is an interesting one. On the one hand, new visits represents growth, and new people discovering you, on the other hand, you want a loyal number of repeat visitors.
Traffic sources – Where is your traffic from. This is great for seeing which advertising campaigns or links are providing you with the most traffic. If your paying for a campaign and getting little or no traffic, you need to work out what is wrong.
Content overview – What is popular? Some content fairs a lot better than others. Can you see any patterns? If you are working with social media, finding a format which works well, then replicating it can be a very powerful way of gaining traffic.
What else can we do?
Analytics can provide you with a lot of data which may be useful or useless depending on your site. It is possible to see the country of origin, the operating system and the Internet browser your visitors are using. The country of origin is useful for determining what kind of adverts would work on your website. If your readership is from the US, adverts targeted towards Americans will do better than those targeted towards your home country. If your website is about cooking and recipe sharing, information on browsers and operating systems is of no use whatsoever.
For more complex uses of Google Analytics I suggest you read Patrick Altoft’s guide to Advanced Analytics . Here he explains how to track exit clicks, downloads, sales and other valuable data. You can see how these things would be beneficial.
Conclusion
Businesses love measuring performance and in many cases it is hard to create useful data which can measure performance in a meaningful way. Online we do not have this problem. The only problem is the limited knowledge of the power of analytics and how to use them. A little time invested in setting up these systems could result in great benefits.
Think how hard it must be for companies to measure the response to an advert in a traditional medium such as print, radio or event TV. Online we have easy access to this data. Take advantage of it!
Manage your inbox from anywhere in the world
by Tom on April 2, 2008
in Productivity
As many of you know, I have been on the road a bit recently. Things have changed the way I have to work. This is a good thing as everyone needs change in their life. It is what keeps things exciting. One of the big obstacles I faced being on the move vs working at home is that I can not lug my desktop around and having everything with me. In fact even a laptop is not always a possibility. Webmail is what I needed. Now I could set up webmail, but I manage many different websites, so need a centralised system to manage all my accounts from.
Key properties I need from a centralised system
- Ability to receive email from multiple websites
- Ability to send email from multiple domains
- Simple filing and searching
- Ability to synchronise with my desktop email client
- Simple to set up and manage
- Affordable (ideally free)
What was the solution?
Well the business solutions typically revolve around Microsoft exchange server and similar systems. These are neither simple nor affordable in my eyes. The solution I went for was Google Mail. It is simple, fast and oh so easy to set up and use. I already use many of the Google tools and Mail has now become a key part of my day to day life, even when at home. It does everything mentioned above!
How I set it up
The way I set it up was to set all my email accounts as forward only accounts on my hosting control panel, and send them to my Google Mail address. From here I would then sort them. You can add loads of outgoing accounts and it is very easy to set up. My only gripe was having to forward emails to the Google account as opposed to being able to just enter the details. You can only enter details for five email accounts in Google Mail.
I have to say – the spam filter at Google Mail is unrivaled in my eyes. I have gone from deleting around one hundred emails a day manually from my inbox that my spam filtered missed to one every other day!
Extra benefits
I have found that Google Calenders and Documents all work well together with the email client. I am actually writing using Google Documents right now. It is just simple and lightweight. It also has the power to post directly to your blog although I have not experimented with that just yet!
Your experiences
I know many people work on the move today. The only drawbacks to this system are that you have to be online to do anything. Personally, almost all my business is online anyway, so that is a given anyway. Do you use Google Mail as described above? Any tips and tricks? Do you use anything else?