ADVERTISING

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University Communications and Marketing
Web Workshops Fall 2005

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HITS How Idiots Track Success of Web Sites
Find Out About Better Measures of Your Web Site
s Success

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Definition

• Beyond hits the bigger picture
• Web analytics - the process of analyzing the
  behavior of visitors to a Web site. The use of
  Web analytics is said to enable a business to
  attract more visitors, retain or attract new
  customers for goods or services, or to increase
  the dollar volume each customer spends.

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Web Site Goals

• To most effectively measure success, one must
  know what they are measuring

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Where We Were
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Growing Our Knowledge

• Developing goals for the Web site after launch of
  second generation (before current)
  
• Discovering hits are for idiots
• We qualified as such for a short time
• Learning about the tools

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Metrics Beyond Hits

• Hits - A single action on the Web server as it
  appears in the log file. 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 visits to this page. A visit
  is a series of actions that begins when a visitor
  views the first page from the server, and ends
  when the visitor leaves the site or remains idle
  beyond the idle-time limit. The default idle-time
  limit is thirty minutes. This time limit can be
  changed by the system administrator.
• Views - Number of times this page was viewed by
  visitors.

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Tools
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Where We Are
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Using Better MetricsWhat We Measure Now Why

• Page views
• Duration of views
• Referring sites
• Search phrases
• Helps with SEO effort
• Top pages
• Visits by day of week
• Countries by visit
• Top directories
• Helps determine usefulness of content

• Top browsers by version
• Important when designing
• Top platforms
• Important when designing
• Top exit pages
• October 2005
• Top 3 - Home page, current students tab, academic
  department page
  
• In our environment, infer visitors are linking to
  sites, such as admissions, for additional
  information

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WebTrends Statistics October 2005

• Page views -  4,514,764 vs. hits - 32,800,324
• Top referring sites
• http//www.kent.edu/143,748  
• http//www.google.com/25,398    
• http//search.yahoo.com/11,716  
• http//flashline.kent.edu/11,309 
• http//dept.kent.edu/8,208
• Top pages
• http//www.kent.edu/
• http//www.kent.edu/currentstudents/
• http//www.kent.edu/Academics/
• http//www.kent.edu/prospectivestudents/
• http//www.kent.edu/Academics/academic_departments
  .cfm
  
• http//www.kent.edu/facultystaff/

• Top countries
• United States
• Australia
• Saudi Arabia
• Canada
• Top WAP (wireless application protocol) browsers
• Motorola
• Sony Ericsson
• Sony Ericsson 
• Nokia WAP Browser

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So What Do the Numbers Mean?
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Applying the Information

• Your Campus, Your Life, Your Classes Video
• 1,705 views from April July
• 2,315 views from August - November
• E-calendar stats
• November 2004 389, 281 views
• November 2005 2,408,067 views

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Getting the Information

• WebTrends Primary Reporting Areas
• Overview Dashboard  (views, hits)
• Marketing Dashboard  (referring sites, search
  engines)
  
• Visitors Dashboard  (new visitors, those
  accepting cookies, countries, length of visits)
  
• Pages Dashboard  (entry pages, exit pages, top
  pages, top directories)
  
• Navigation Dashboard  
• Technical Dashboard  (hits, bandwidth, average
  time to serve pages)
  
• Activity Dashboard  (activity by day of week,
  activity by hour of day)
  
• Browsers and Platforms Dashboard

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WebTrends Measurement Cycles

• Timeframes
• A day
• A week
• Month
• Quarter
• Year
• Comparative
• Lets take a look
• http//mediadc.mnm.kent.edu1099/wrc/bin/WebTrends
  ReportingCenter
  

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Sample Reports

• Human resources
• Ashtabula top pages
• www.kent.edu quarterly
• Review, questions

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Where We Will Grow
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Applying the Information

• Determine if a page that should be successful has
  anticipated activity
  
• Choose to optimize the page, improve its success
  (change promotion of, navigation to, label,
  etc.)
  
• Monitor reports for improvement
• Congratulate yourself it if occurs, optimization
  was a success

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Optimization - Splash Pages

• www.kent.edu/moreinfo format dropped
• Splash page format
• http//www.kent.edu/moreinfo/pc1.cfm
• http//www.kent.edu/moreinfo/rc4.cfm
• Helps determine which ads are working in which
  publications

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Working on Conversion Areas

• Conversion occurs when a visitor completes an
  action you want them to, supporting your business
  goals
  
• Translates to purchases in retail

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Conversion in Higher Education

• More difficult to measure ROI and conversion on
  an informational site
  
• Little research to support it because it doesnt
  make money (Nielsen Norman)

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Conversion in Higher Education

• Beyond online applications, try
• Forms
• e-mail signs ups
• Surveys
• Polls

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UCM Recent Efforts

• Conversion opportunity through Presidential
  Search Web pages due to online survey
  
• WebTrends shows 436 November views to the /input
  page
  
• Survey results so far 109

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Additional Adjustments

• Use data to determine if UCM home page news
  content is used
  
• If not, evaluate whether time invested in content
  development should be used for other tasks

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Where You Could Grow
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Resources

• Consider migrating to CommonSpot to gain access
  to WebTrends
  
• Investigate freeware and replace tacky counters
• In either case, take advantage of resources

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Resources

• Books
• http//www.targeting.com/books.html
• Freeware (not an expert on these, searched
  Google)
  
• http//www.freewarehome.com/index.html?2FInternet
  2FWeb_Servers2FWeb_Server_Statistics_Tools_t.htm
  l
  
• Professional organizations
• http//www.webanalyticsassociation.org
• WebSideStory, WebTrends, Omniture, NetTrackers,
  others were founders
  
• Extra for current Cspot/WebTrends clients
• Online sessions and tutorials

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