Topics 4 - Analytics

1) Looking at the site usage, what does the terms visits, page views and pages/visit mean? What does the bounce rate mean and does it vary much from day to day?

When using Google Analytics to analyse the site www.foliospaces.com the following information was found:

Visits: Represents the total number of visits the site has had.  As of Monday 11/04/2011 there had been a total of 8427.  this amount represented an average of 271.84 visits per day .

Page Views: Is the number of time a page had been viewed. The total number of page views on Monday 11/04/2011 was 92,334. 

Pages/Visit: Is the average number of site pages viewed by a user.  As of Monday 11/04/2011 the average page views was 10.96.

Bounce Rate: It represents the percentage of visitors who enter the site and "bounce" (leave the site) rather than continue viewing other pages within the same site.  The bounce rate does vary from day to day and the average bounce rate is $35.47%

2) Now look at the traffic sources report. What are the three sources of traffic and where has most of the traffic come from?

The three sources of traffic are Direct Traffic (42.57%) Referring Sites (23.76%) and Search Engines (33.68%).  Most of the traffic has come from educational institutions.

3) What was the most popular web browser used to access the site?

Up until Monday 11/04/2011 the most popular web browser used to access the site was Internet Explorer with 432 visits which equated to 51.36% of the total browser statistic.  Internet Explorer 8 is the most used version with 66.41%.

4) How many countries did visitors to Foliospaces come from and what were the top three countries?

As at 12/04/2011 there were a total of 8586 visits and these came from 74 countries/territories.  The top 3 countries listed were:

Australia: 3894

United States: 2193 visits

United Kingdom: 991 visits



Google Analytics World Map



5) Having clicked every possible link on my analytics, make a few comments on:

(a) What you can track:

• Visits
• Page Views
• Time on Site
• Bounce Rate
• Traffic Sources
• List of Countries
• User Overview

(b) What you can track over time:

• Number of Visits
• Number of Page Visits
• Length of Time Spent on a Page
• Visits per Country
• Bounce Rate

(c) What you can’t track.

• User Gender
• Specific User Location
• User Age

6) What do the following terms mean?

High Bounce Rate: High bounce rate means the many times a user/person left the website after entering.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_analytics

Keywords: Keywords, in web analytics, are the words used when searching for a website in a search engine.  Each website has its own keywords that allow users to find relevant websites that contains the keywords which the user is looking for. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_analytics

Average Page Depth: Means the average user page visits for a site. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_analytics

Click Through Rate: is a way of measuring the success of an online ad campaign.  A CTR is obtained by dividing the "number of users who clicked on an ad" on a web page by the "number of times the ad was delivered. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_analytics

Click: Means the selection of a web items (i.e. hyperlink) and pressing a button on a mouse.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_analytics

Cookie: Cookies store web/user data on a user's PC in small text files which is data about websites visited. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_analytics

Impression: Is an advertisement's appearance on an accessed web page.

http://www.webopedia.com/TERM/I/impression.html   

Hyperlink: In computing, a hyperlink (or link) is a reference to a document that the reader can directly follow, or that is followed automatically. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperlink

Navigation: Web navigation refers to the process of traversing a network of web resources, and the user interface that is used to do so. A central theme in web design is the development of a web navigation interface that maximizes usability. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_navigation

Pageview: Is when the internet page is viewed. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_analytics  

Session: A session is how long the user is on the website for. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_analytics  

Unique Visitors (or Absolute Unique Visitors): A unique visitor is when the website identifies the user by IP address.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unique_visitors

URL: In computing, a Uniform Resource Locator (URL) is a Uniform Resource Identifier (URI) that specifies where an identified resource is available and the mechanism for retrieving it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Url 

Visitor: A visitor is a user/person who visits a website. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_analytics   

Visitor Session: A visitor session is the amount of time a user/person spends on a website.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_analytics    

Analytics: How it works

Google Analytics: Tutorial