Ministry Web Tip (Don't miss the FREE bonus at the end)
Real Proof that your Website is Effective (Stats) 
Ok, you’ve got your web site up and running on the internet. Everything looks great. All the links within your site are directed and landing where they are supposed to, your pictures are loading in fine, etc. All this is fine; however, is your web site effective? It is getting the response you were intending and accomplishing the goal you had it created to accomplish? How do you know?
One of the ways you can track the effectiveness of your web site is by Web Analytics. “Web-a-What” you may ask? It really isn’t as difficult to understand as you might think. Simply put, Web analytics is the study of the behavior of website visitors. In an organizational context, web analytics especially refers to the use of data collected from a web site to determine which aspects of the website work towards the organizations objectives; for example, which landing pages encourage people to make a forward moving decision in your direction or purchase.
Data collected almost always includes web traffic reports. It may also include e-mail response rates, direct mail campaign data, sales and lead information, user performance data such as click heat mapping, or other custom metrics as needed. This data is typically compared against key performance indicators for performance, and used to improve a web site or marketing campaign's audience response.
There are two main technological approaches to collecting web analytics data. The first method, logfile analysis, reads the logfiles in which the web server records all its transactions. The second method, page tagging, uses JavaScript on each page to notify a third-party server when a page is rendered by a web browser.
Both logfile analysis programs and page tagging solutions are readily available to organizations which wish to perform web analytics. In many cases, the same web analytics organization will offer both approaches. The question then arises which method an organization should choose. There are advantages to each approach.
Advantages of logfile analysis
The main advantages of logfile analysis over page tagging are as follows:
- The web server normally already produces logfiles, so the raw data is already available. To collect data via page tagging requires changes to the website.
- The web server reliably records every transaction it makes. Page tagging relies on the visitors' browsers co-operating, which a certain proportion may not do (for example, if JavaScript is disabled).
- The data is on the organization's own servers, and is in a standard, rather than a proprietary, format. This makes it easy for an organization to switch programs later, use several different programs, and analyze historical data with a new program. Page tagging solutions involve vendor lock-in.
- Logfiles contain information on visits from search engine spiders. Although these should not be reported as part of the human activity, it is important data for performing search engine optimization.
- Logfiles contain information on failed requests; page tagging only records an event if the page is successfully viewed.
Advantages of page tagging:
The main advantages of page tagging over logfile analysis are as follows:
- The JavaScript is automatically run every time the page is loaded. Thus there are fewer worries about caching.
- It is easier to add additional information to the JavaScript, which can then be collected by the remote server. For example, information about the visitors' screen sizes, or the price of the goods they purchased, can be added in this way. With logfile analysis, information not normally collected by the web server can only be recorded by modifying the URL.
- Page tagging can report on events which do not involve a request to the web server, such as interactions within Flash movies.
- The page tagging service manages the process of assigning cookies to visitors; with logfile analysis, the server has to be configured to do this.
- Page tagging is available to companies who do not run their own web servers.
Key Definitions:
- Hit - A request for a file from the web server. Available only in log analysis. The number of hits received by a website is frequently cited to assert its popularity, but this number is extremely misleading and dramatically over-estimates popularity. A single web-page typically consists of multiple (often dozens) of discrete files, each of which is counted as a hit as the page is downloaded, so the number of hits is really an arbitrary number more reflective of the complexity of individual pages on the website than the website's actual popularity. The total number of visitors or page views provides a more realistic and accurate assessment of popularity.
- Page View - A request for a file whose type is defined as a page in log analysis. An occurrence of the script being run in page tagging. In log analysis, a single page view may generate multiple hits as all the resources required to view the page (images, .js and .css files) are also requested from the web server.
- Visit / Session - A series of requests from the same uniquely identified client with a set timeout. A visit is expected to contain multiple hits (in log analysis) and page views.
- First Visit / First Session - A visit from a visitor who has not made any previous visits.
- Visitor / Unique Visitor/UniqueUser - The uniquely identified client generating requests on the web server (log analysis) or viewing pages (page tagging) within a defined time period (i.e. day, week or month). A Unique Visitor counts once within the timescale. A visitor can make multiple visits.
- Repeat Visitor - A visitor that has made at least one previous visit. The period between the last and current visit is called visitor recency and is measured in days.
- New Visitor - A visitor that has not made any previous visits. This definition creates a certain amount of confusion (see common confusions below), and is sometimes substituted with analysis of first visits.
- Impression - An impression is each time an advertisement loads on a users screen. Anytime you see a banner, that is an impression.
- Singletons - the number of visits where only a single page is viewed. While not a useful metric in and of itself the number of singletons is indicative of various forms of "Click Fraud" as well as being used to calculate bounce rate and in some cases to identify automatons ("bots").
- Bounce Rate / % Exit - The percentage of visits where the visitor enters and exits at the same page without visiting any other pages on the site in between.
WOW! Ok, maybe it is a bit more complex than stated earlier; however, it really doesn’t have to be. The long and short of web site analytic statistics and reason behind them is to make sure your organization’s website is effectively working for you. Delivering the results it was originally created to deliver and not just another place holder in this vastly expanding cyber-world we call the internet.
(Note on key defenitions: Currently there are no globally agreed definitions within web analytics as the industry bodies have been trying to agree definitions that are useful and definitive for some time. The main bodies who have had input in this area have been Jicwebs(Industry Committee for Web Standards)/ABCe (Auditing Bureau of Circulations electronic, UK and Europe), The WAA (Web Analytics Association, US) and to a lesser extent the IAB (Interactive Advertising Bureau). This does not prevent the following list from being a useful guide, suffering only slightly from ambiguity. Both the WAA and the ABCe provide more definitive lists for those who are declaring their statistics using the metrics defined by either.)
Certain portions of this article are excerpted from: source ref.: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_analytics
P.S. FREE Bonus: What every ministry website should have...but few do.
To help you understand this concept more fully, critique your current site, or help you plan out a new website, please feel free to contact us at 888-997-9947 to speak with a web specialist regarding your specific needs. See website solutions that will help you fulfill your mission and vision. Make Elexio your GoTo web site resource. We can serve all your current needs, and then some.
Elexio.com – “Where ministry clicks.”
• If you found this article helpful or you have comments, please, let us know. (Feedback)
• If you would like to see an article regarding a particular topic not already in our archives, please let us know that too. (Feedback)
