A few months ago
my friend Dirk tipped me about
Google Analytics. He uses GA to keep track of all the visitors and customers at his forum server and it helps him in optimizing the flow of his website.
Since
September of 2005 I've been using
a free Stat Counter account and I liked it pretty much. The only real downside being the fact that it would only track the last hundred visits to my site (an upgrade to your account lets you track a thousand visits). Even so, Dirk's tip peeked my curiosity and I created a GA account, just to give it a try.
Two months down the road I have to say that I am rather impressed with Google's work! Not only does the site provide me with detailed information, but it also looks absolutely great! The interface is rather user friendly (although one or two minor glitches pop up in Safari) and it contains just the right amount of eye candy to spiffy things up.
One of the most interesting features
Analytics provides you with, is the option to configure
Goals. By telling Google about the path you would like visitors to take through your website and by setting certain milestones you will be able to track how effective your site's design is. Google will tell you exactly at which points along the path people stop moving towards the goal you've set, allowing you to optimize the relevant pages.
A very simple example: I would like people to leave comments on my blog, hence one of the goals I've set for my website is for people to reach the
addcomment.php file. In order to get there, people will have to visit both
index.php and
viewcomments.php.
Using
Analytics it becomes clear that:
1. Out of 3927 hits to
index.php only 72 have progressed towards step two of the
funnel.
2. Out of 72 visits to
viewcomments.php all 72 have progressed towards the final step and thus towards the goal.
This could lead me to conclude/brainstorm a few things:
* There's nothing wrong with my commenting page. Everyone who gets there intends to leave a message and they do.
* Only 1.8% of the hits to my front page actually lead to comments by visitors.
* This could mean that my front page design sucks and that people are not aware that they can leave a comment. I think this is rather unlikely though, since the commenting links are in plain sight.
* This could also mean that my blogging is ultimately dull and that people die from boredom before they can actually leave me a comment, cursing me to eternal damnation for their suffering. I am well aware my writing isn't the greatest and I'm also aware that I write about rather mundane stuff. So it's definitely a factor.
* This could also mean that I attract a huge lot of
hit-and-run visitors who find their way to my site in a rather random manner, who have a quick glance and who decide that it's not for them.
This last idea is supported by some of the other data
Google Analytics provides me with:
* Out of all the visits I've had in the past two months approximately 30% are
returning customers. The rest visit once and never show their face again.
* Looking at the depth of all the visits we see that ~2600 visits only load one page before leaving again. ~550 load two pages and the rest (my regulars and a few sysadmins digging around for
Nagios stuff) load more than three pages.
* This is supported by the
bounce rates amassed by my pages. They seems to average around 65%-70%.
Again, this could lead me to a number of conclusions:
* my content is uninteresting.
* my website's layout and design is boring and unattractive.
* people come here to looking for something, but find that my site doesn't have what they hoped for.
Anywho... Loads of lessons to be learned from the information that
Google Analytics provides me with. Aside from all the stuff I've mentioned so far, GA also provides the bog standard stuff that all others give you: browser stats, OS info, platform info, geo-location (most of my readers are from western Europe and the east of the US by the by), stuff like that.
Posted in:
google
,
google analytics
,
sysadmin
,
tracking visitors
,
website statistics
