Web traffic analysis

2012

Contents

1............................................................................................................................Web Traffic Analysis

............................................................................................................................................................3
2............................................................................................................Web Traffic Analyses Use Cases
............................................................................................................................................................4
3..............................................................................................................SEO and Web Traffic Analyses
............................................................................................................................................................5
4.......................................................................................................................Tools for Traffic Analysis
............................................................................................................................................................6
5..................................................................................................................................Google Analytics
............................................................................................................................................................6
6.............................................................................................................................Mining the Analytics
............................................................................................................................................................8
7..........................................................................................................................................Conclusions
............................................................................................................................................................8
8................................................................................................................................................Sources
............................................................................................................................................................8

1
1. Web traffic analysis
Web traffic is the amount of data sent and received by visitors to a web site. Since the
mid-1990s, web traffic has been the largest portion of Internet traffic. This is determined by
the number of visitors and the number of pages they visit. Sites monitor the incoming and
outgoing traffic to see which parts or pages of their site are popular and if there are any
apparent trends, such as one specific page being viewed mostly by people in a particular
country.

Web site traffic analysis is about collecting, analyzing, and interpreting the following data:

 How the traffic arrives at your site

 Which users make up the traffic

 How users interact with your site

 What the results were of the visits

The results of the analysis should help you to do the following:

 Measure the effectiveness of your customer acquisition and retention strategies

2
 Develop strategies to contain unwanted traffic leakage from your Web site and to
enhance the online experience

 Increase the number of happy-ending visits

 Project the likely outcomes of future activities

2. Web traffic analysis use cases [1]

3
3. SEO and web traffic analysis
4
 Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the process of improving the visibility of a website
or a web page in search engines search results. Every SEO campaign needs to have
measurable outcomes. These typically depend on the web application domain – sometimes it
might be profit, sometimes it may be just a hit rate. No matter what, the results can be still
seen best and in details through web traffic analysis tool. The better the tool, the wider
variety of parameters can be observed.

4. Tools for web traffic analysis

Keeping track of the traffic to your web site involves constant web traffic analysis. This
can be easily accomplished with software tools that are designed specifically to help keeping
track of the people who visit a web site. Such tools are also able to present detailed
information on the nature and quantity of the traffic you're receiving. To popular client-side,
so called tagged tools, belong Google Analytics, yahoo web analytics, Crazy egg, Click
Tracks provided by i-Zimbra, Compete etc.

Starting from the very beginning however may lead a carful observer to visit counters
that used to be present at many pages. Typically php coded snippet provided only a basic
functionality counted total amount of visit, and visits per day/week. Another group of web-
traffic analysing tools has been typically introduced by the hosting providers and relates to
server. These are firmly based on analysing actual server log, where all the basic information
about users and their visit patterns can be recorded and hence applied for further research.
These are nowadays of far less use because JavaScript can provide far more information
including tracking user behaviour when on the page.

Many of these solutions have already been presented by the presentation of competing
group in details, so this paper will thus focus mainly on Google Analytics, which thanks to

5
the long tradition and doubtless quality standards became factual industry benchmark, which
other solutions typically try to mimic.

5. Google Analytics
Google Analytics has been first introduced to the public in 2005, yet similarly as in case
of more recent start-up of Google+, it has at first limited user base potential. Technically it
can be thus said it is available to broader public since 2006. Google Analytics is embedded
into tracked page as approximately four lines of JavaScript code containing a unique
identifier related to user account. This snippet loads the main code from Google server,
which is actually used for the analysis. Before introduction of asynchronous JavaScript, this
had been suspected as a possible cause of performance drop associated with page loading [4].

Google Analytics can gather data from many different fields including actual location of
visitor based on IP, information related to used technologies for accessing the page including
browser, which can be of foremost importance concerning availability and optimisation for
ancestor browser versions still in use. Generally the most emphasis will be expended towards
visit statistics and actual behaviour of respective visitors after reaching the page. The crucial
indicators are number of new/returning users, which may reflect the actual market share as
well as ability to attract newcomers, time statistics tracking what user really could have
accomplished when visiting the page, page views or search depth per session suggesting what
was the real interest, and importantly exit page and bounce rate statistics suggesting wheatear
user was in place which can potentially help to fulfil given goals.

Another set of indicators closely related to the SEO process describes the way a visitor
actually reached the page. This includes sources of traffic, which led visitor to the final
destination including direct links (see link-building) as well as visits endorsed by the search
6
engine. Crucial for the analysis are very often keywords, in other term a query user search for
to reach desired content. If some of the crucial terms describing the purpose of webpage have
not been found in this list, it may suggest running addition SEO is desirable.

Main advantage of Google Analytics is tight integration with special tools designed
especially for SEO campaigns including Google AdWords or Google AdSence utilising a
possibility to run advertising campaigns using specified parameters from Analytics and
newly also to evaluate the campaign success using E-commerce tool. This version is
available since 2011 coming with new design.

The page tagging tracking technology naturally still has certain weaknesses, which can
corrupt a few user visit data. First of all, as using client side based JavaScript, the actual
tracking snippet may not be initiated if some users still rely on blocking this technology. Also
the web-analytics used to be permitted by older versions of AddBlock however this problem
is supposed to be overcome now.

7
6. Mining the data
Any traffic analysing tool can provide valuable insights about the traffic associated with
given web. Without proper interpretation, these can just be interesting data about how much
users visit your page. Even though the tracking software is sometimes subject of criticism,
because of gathering too much data about actual visitor, this is what can provide fertile
background for understanding the target market. The aim of any such analysis is however
gain a broader understanding either about initial situation, or about how much the SEO
campaign contributed to meeting specified goals.

Let us demonstrate this on two simple business models – the first on is just an advertising
hub relying on high position in search engine and offering an advertising space based on high
hit rate. For such a page is of foremost importance reaching the most possible audience,
which in fact means any visit counts. Traditional e-shop web presentation however needs to
target the audience to web-pages potentially bringing profit. In best case this means actual
purchase, however also reaching the product list and spending there significant amount of
time to comprehend the information.

7. Conclusion - Petr
Web traffic analysis is a vital tool for understanding visitors and thus successfully
targeting SEO and advertising campaigns. Through recent years the page tagged JavaScript
based analytic tools gained a majority of the market, especially the Google analytics, which
is supposed to cover 50% of the top 1.000.000 visited web pages. [3] Even though the data
can provide valuable insight, it always have to be considered in relation of business plan of
the web site – what can be desirable for web based on hit-rate and advertisement may not be
useful for generic e-shop.

8
 8. Sources
[1] Web Traffic Analytics and User Experience. [Online]. [Quoted 2012-4-4]. Accessible at
<http://www.boxesandarrows.com/view/web_traffic_analytics_and_user_experience>

[2] Web traffic analysis .[online]. [Quoted 2012-4-2]. Accessible at

<http://www.active-venture.com/web-traffic/web-traffic-analysis.htm>

[3] Advanced Web-metrics.[online]. [Quoted 2012-4-1]. Accessible at

<http://www.advanced-web-metrics.com/blog/>

[4] Google analytics learn.[online]. [Quoted 2012-4-3]. Accessible at

<http://www.google.com/analytics/learn/index.html>