Friday, November 8, 2013

Understand How Your Traffic Campaigns Perform



In today’s information economy, it can be said the person with the most information wins. The same would hold true if you want a successful website; you must have information to analyze if the things you’re doing to promote it are effective. But what are the types of website analysis systems are available to you, and which of them will best suit you needs? Is there an analysis technique that is more accurate than others in helping you decide which promotions are actually getting results? Should you use your web host’s default statistics program, or are there other services you should consider? This chapter will give a brief overview of web analytics and their uses in the measurement of your website elements’ contribution to your business objectives.

There are basically two types of website analysis in wide use today, log file analysis and page tagging. Log file analysis reads the logs a server records on every transaction, but this might be inaccurate due to the widespread use of page caching. The desire to outsource web analytics and expand the available data has led to page tagging, which basically uses a JavaScript (PHP or ASP in some cases) to count the number of times an image (which may be invisible) is served to a visitor. This JavaScript can also pass along information about a particular page and the visitor.

Many web hosts offer a default statistics program to provide you with basic information. Awstats and Webalizer  are most likely the most popular stats engines available today. Keep in mind your web host may update different types of information at different times, so if you want a complete picture of what has been happening at your site you may need to wait for information which is a few days old.

A recent trend has seen a move away from these systems in favor of the more detailed information available through Google Analytics. Google Analytics is located at https://www.google.com/analytics/ and as you have probably guessed, is operated by Google. This system offers a wide array of analysis tools, including reports for Marketing Optimization and Content Optimization. Would you like information to help you understand how your marketing efforts are working, and where there might be a link in your funnel? It’s all there, and it’s all free.

With any of these services, you will at least consider tracking your referrers. After all, once you start promoting your site, you’ll use different methods and it is important to track which ones work and which ones don’t. With that information in mind, you’ll then repeat the steps that lead to success and stop spending time for strategies that don’t get results.

Remember, the player with the most information wins!





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