Web analytics is a generic term meaning the study of the impact of a website on its users. Ecommerce companies and other website publishers often use Web analytics software to measure such concrete details as how many people visited their site, how many of those visitors were unique visitors, how they came to the site (i.e., if they followed a link to get to the site or came there directly), what keywords they searched with on the site’s search engine, how long they stayed on a given page or on the entire site and what links they clicked on and when they left the site.
Web analytic software can also be used to monitor whether or not a site’s pages are working properly. With this information, Web site administrators can determine which areas of the site are popular and which areas of the site do not get traffic. Web analytics provides these site administrators and publishers with data that can be used to streamline a website to create a better user experience.
On-Site Web Analytics
Our Web analytics typically measure the commercial effectiveness of a given website. Measuring and tracking the variables listed below can help a site owner increase conversions and profits:
Hits: A hit measures the number of requests for text, images, and files that your Web server receives for a given page. The number of hits a site receives depends on how it’s organized, not how visitors interact with it, this metric is useful only in evaluating information such your server load.
Click Paths: Also called click tracks, or click trees, these are graphical representations of typical journeys through a site.
Page Views: The number of times any page was viewed by any visitor. This is often divided by visits to give a page-views-per-visit figure that represents the average number of pages each visitor viewed on a single trip to your site.
Top Entry and Exit Pages: These are the pages where most people enter the site (and don’t assume it’s the home page) and where most people leave it.
Visits: The most useful unit of measurement in site analytics is the number of visitors to a particular site or page. The trend in the overall number of visits to your site over time can give insight into site’s popularity.
Unique Visitors: This is the number of site visits by different users. If two people visit the site three times each, you’d have six visits but two unique visitors.
Benefits of Web Analytics
Web Analytics let Website Managers determine which areas of the site are popular, and which areas of the site do not get traffic. Based on the data they can streamline a website to create a better user experience which in turn helps to increase the overall popularity of a website.
