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Tracking usersAnalyzing how people use your site
by Dylan Tweney www.tweney.com [email protected]
Dylan Tweneywww.tweney.com
From Web logs to customer databases Web servers record massive
amounts of data Making that data usable is another
thing altogether! Web data is an integral part of e-
business intelligence -- learn to love it
If a Web site goes down and there’s no one there to hear it, does it make a sound?
Dylan Tweneywww.tweney.com
A sample web traffic log
Dylan Tweneywww.tweney.com
Log file details net124.infoworld.com - -
[15/May/2000:13:54:50 -0400] "GET /weblog.shtml HTTP/1.1" 200 21583 "http://www.tweney.com/" "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 5.0; Windows 98; DigExt)"
j101.inktomi.com - - [15/May/2000:13:54:59 -0400] "GET / HTTP/1.0" 200 17931 "-" "Slurp/si ([email protected]; http://www.inktomi.com/slurp.html)"
Dylan Tweneywww.tweney.com
Finding useful information
Forget “hits” Concentrate on pageviews and
unique visitors Examine paths through site Relative page analysis (home page
vs. other pages; top pages on site)
Dylan Tweneywww.tweney.com
Referer log data
How do surfers find your site? Search engine query terms -
what’s working? Who’s linking to your site?
Dylan Tweneywww.tweney.com
Other important metrics
Click-throughs (on banners, product offers, etc.)
Conversion rates (sales!) Other business metrics: Cost per
customer, cost per sale, repeat customer rate, average transaction size, etc….
Dylan Tweneywww.tweney.com
Software that can help
WebTrends Accrue Hit List (formerly
Marketwave) Macromedia Aria (formerly
Andromedia)
Dylan Tweneywww.tweney.com
Outsourcing options
I/Pro Service Metrics Keynote WebCriteria
Dylan Tweneywww.tweney.com
Traffic analysis demo
Sample WebTrends report click here
Dylan Tweneywww.tweney.com
Slicing and dicing
Page views by section of your site Page views by day / hour Host domains / companies (AOL,
etc.) Browsers / operating systems used Visiting robots
Dylan Tweneywww.tweney.com
Design / implementation / analysis loop Design for your customers Build and deploy -- then examine
usage data Make sure data finds its way back
to site builders! “A/B testing” (per Jeff Bezos)
Dylan Tweneywww.tweney.com
Demographics: the holy grail of Web analysis (It’s arduous to find, only the pure
in heart can bring it home, and it usually arrives too late to help)
More specifically: Moving technical metrics to business context
Integrating customer information with Web behavior
Accrue Insight net.Genesis
Dylan Tweneywww.tweney.com
Specific customer behavior Identify your best customers—and
treat them accordingly! Requires some kind of user
identification: registration, login, cookies, unique URLs
Dylan Tweneywww.tweney.com
Security and privacy issues Don’t do a DoubleClick Privacy statement: Draft, and post Let users decide whether or not to
share their data
Dylan Tweneywww.tweney.com
How to capture more valuable data Surveys
and, as bait: contests and giveaways Incentive programs for frequent
customers / visitors (CyberGold, Beenz, Flooz)
Search engine logs Email newsletters User registration Personalization
Dylan Tweneywww.tweney.com
Survey services/software
Zoomerang CoolSurveys PinPoint
Dylan Tweneywww.tweney.com
Analyze your own search engine logs What are people searching for on
your site? What searches turn up zero
results? What searches turn up more than
2 screens of results? Close the loop with enhanced
metatags, manually-crafted search results, “jump” keywords
Dylan Tweneywww.tweney.com
Using email to track usage
A “page view” doesn’t have to happen through a Web browser
Opt-in newsletters are a terrific indication of interest
Use unique URLs to track click-throughs on mailings
HTML e-mail lets you count who’s actually opening the messages
Dylan Tweneywww.tweney.com
User registration strategies Deliver real value in exchange for
personal information / registration Cookies -- simplify subsequent
identification / login Follow up with registered users
after sale -- or non-sale -- via email survey
Track registered users’ traffic vs. known data (e.g. purchase history, ZIP code)
Dylan Tweneywww.tweney.com
Personalization!
Let your customers tell you what they want
Completes the design/implement loop with customer-specific feedback -- automatically
Example: Amazon.com Recommendations (demo)
Dylan Tweneywww.tweney.com
Benchmarking
Compare your site to the rest of the Web -- and your competitors
Media Metrix BizRate.com Keynote Systems
Dylan Tweneywww.tweney.com
Conclusions
The best designed-site in the world still needs real-world testing
Listen to your users -- and watch them. They’ll tell you what’s working -- and what needs to be fixed.
Continue enhancing your site based on feedback & traffic analysis.