March 2002   

Your site may have a high number of visitors, but what is your site's "stickiness" factor? In other words, do visitors stick around and become customers? If not, how much time do they spend on your site and at what point do they leave? Where do they come from? The answers to these questions are vital.

To make your site work for you, you need to know:

• The ads and advertisers that appeal to your visitors.
• The effectiveness of sales techniques used on the site.
• The factors that bring visitors to your site.
• The rate of return visits.
• The reasons, such as technical problems or not-so-dynamic content, that visitors leave your site.

Methods of Obtaining Information

You've probably already explored numerous ways to obtain information about users of your site. These include:

• Analysis software
• Counters
• Click-throughs
• E-mail lists
• Log data
• Online analysis services
• Site-registration requests

Many people erroneously think that hit counters record the number of visitors to their site. Actually, the counter records hits, and a hit is any request for information on a page. Since every page requires multiple hits from one visitor, these figures can be misleading. There could be a hit for the audio files, another for the graphics files, and another for the HTML file, each request coming from the same visitor on the same page.

E-tailers should be more interested in the number of page views, which is the number of times the page is viewed in its entirety.

You can get visitors to register on your site or give you valuable information by offering them an incentive, such as participation in a contest, a free gift, or a discount. But be very careful about the kind of information you request, the way it is gathered, and the way it's used. The hottest issue in today's cyberworld is privacy protection. As the issue becomes more heated and better publicized, your site's visitors will understandably be far more cautious about supplying personally identifiable data. Before you start requesting personal information from your cyber-visitors, make sure your site has a solid privacy policy displayed in a prominent spot. The Write Edge Newsletter archives contain several articles on this subject, but the major points are worth repeating:

• Allow return customers to view and update the information they have supplied.
• Allow your customers to "opt-in" to your information gathering rather than requiring them to "opt-out" of it.
• Have a specific reason for each piece of information you request.
• Make sure your employees understand and adhere to the confidentiality of customer information.
• Never sell customer data or share it with third parties unless you have the customer's specific permission to do so.
• Restrict access to personal information within your company on a "need-to-know" basis.
• Use the information only for the purposes and in the manner stated in your privacy policy.

Log File Analysis

Most Web servers keep text files listing requests made to the server. These files are called "log files." They contain some of the easiest information to obtain, but they may also include some of the most unreliable data.

Log files can tell you:

• How long visitors stay.
• What browsers and operating systems they use.
• What pages your visitors are viewing.
• What sites the visitors come from.
• What time they arrive.

That information also can be misleading. If a requested page is drawn from a cache, the server may not record the request.

If visitors are tracked by their IP address, this also could result in incorrect data about return visits. Web surfers can receive a different IP address every time they log onto the Internet. Log data may show two identical IP addresses, but this doesn't mean the same user visited the site twice. In all probability, two different users were given the same IP address at different times of the day. A person who revisits your site after a second logon probably will be using a different IP address.

If your site offers members an opportunity to log in with a password each time they visit, it will be much easier for you to track their movements on your site. However, your analysis will have to take into account the fact that many people don't want to have to log in. Some potential visitors may even ignore your site rather than participate in the log-in process.

Cookies, tools used to store the information given by site visitors, are not always accurate either. For example, if Angie visits your site in the morning, and her son uses the same computer to visit the site in the afternoon, your data will show two visits from the same customer. In reality, two different customers used the same computer. Now suppose that in the afternoon, Angie used her computer at work to revisit your site. Your cookies data would show her as a different customer.

Besides, some users dislike cookies and turn them off, which means that the data collected by cookies doesn't include information about every visitor.

If you see a significant number of visitors leaving the site at a certain point, you'll probably want to make changes there. Perhaps you can solve a technical problem or improve boring content. On the other hand, if a certain area of the site attracts a great deal of attention, you may want to use it as a model for other areas.

Because of the international nature of the Web, if you have numerous visitors from other countries, you might want to make the site multilingual. See our newsletter article on translation software and services for more information on this subject.

Why worry about what browsers or operating systems your visitors are using? You want your site to be accessible to the highest number of visitors. If you have the most sophisticated graphics, audio, and technological advances, users with older equipment and software may have difficulty accessing your pages. Sometimes, simpler is better.

Application-Monitors Analysis

Application monitors can provide more detailed information, such as:

• Number of click-throughs (moves from one ad to a second via referral from the first).
• Number of up-sells (purchase of a second item as the result of an ad that appears after the first purchase).
• Number of visitors who become customers (known as the "conversion rate").
• Source that referred the visitor to your site.

An analysis of this information will give you demographic statistics to present to advertisers. You can also use this information to make decisions about what kinds of advertisers to pursue or the content of advertisements you use.

Optimize Data Use

You will get the best use of the data you gather online if you combine it with demographic information gathered in more traditional ways by numerous companies. Taking the email and geographical addresses you have received online, you can match them with outside information about customers -- income, age, household statistics, lifestyle, and many other topics. But once again, be sure to adhere to privacy protection standards when doing so.

Sometimes this information can be compiled in real time, allowing you to offer a site visitor a customized advertisement or special offer.

An analysis of all your data will allow you to develop customer profiles that enable you to best tailor your site to your customers. And this should result in an even greater customer response. Learning to use these statistics effectively can have very positive effects on the most important statistic of all: your bottom line.