I decided to write up a short bit on web analytics 101 finally. What I’m going to cover here will traverse over data points retrieved from 3 different reports that can be pulled via Webtrends Marketing Lab Analytics OnDemand Offering. Keep in mind, this is an extremely minimal amount of data I?m collecting, as it is only my tech blog which doesn?t have much traffic. As your traffic bumps up there are a lot of other data points that you can collect that provide actionable steps toward increasing sales, traffic, etc. This entry will cover these basic reports and how I use the data to orient my blog toward my readers (and of course me, because I enjoy it).
The Pages Report
The pages report is a vital place to start. One thing I always do is eliminate the initial root domain from the results. The reason behind this is that removing that, places a more appropriate view of the graphs in relation to actual page views among the individual views. Usually the root has so many more views & visits than any other page that the results will be heavily skewed toward the root. Thus removing that puts a more representative view of the results on display. This is easy to do, just merely click on the Visits or View number for the root domain page and click, a menu will popup that will allow you to select "less than" this result. That will remove the single root page and boom, results are now spread solely against the backdrop of actual pages.
The All Entry Pages Report
This report I really dig. The path analysis chart is golden. There is some similar data with the Pages Report but this really shows the path in which users are entering the site. It provides an immediate point of recognition for the analytics analyst to get immediate insight into the navigation users’ take when coming to the site. This is something that marketing, designers, developers, and anyone working with a website ? especially e-commerce ? must keep up with to assure the website is utilized efficiently. If pages aren?t being hit that are high priorities, the appropriate actions need to be taken, and this report shows that with about 3 seconds of review.
The Overview Dashboard
I have a love and hate relationship with dashboards. Dashboards are a necessity for getting quick insight into data points, but often cause one to ignore further investigation into various data segments. In all of the reports above, when the traffic is heavy further investigation is almost always mandatory for true insight into what is going on with a site. This report provides a way to find out where one should investigate and in what order. Are your new versus returning visitors numbers off?
