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Monday, August 16, 2004

Maximizing ROI Via Web Site Traffic Analysis - Part 2 Of 2

by  Lee  Traupel 

Last issue, we covered "Fundamentals and Jargon Watch" and "Traffic Counter Applications."

Web Trends Applications and Interface

Web Trends (the company) was acquired by netiQ, Inc. (the parent company) not too long ago due to their strong market leadership position with Web traffic analysis software. Like many good web-focused software companies, netiQ enables you to download all of their apps for a 30 day trial period. Estimates range from 60-80% market share for one of their three primary products; i.e. "Web Trends Log Analyzer," their baseline $500.00 USD application, a good solution for most Web sites that have a single domain or under 25 in total. "Web Trends Analysis Suite" (SRP $2.5K USD), which incorporates the functionality of the Log Analyzer product and adds more features for managing bandwidth usage (interior and external), monitoring and alerting an IT Manager or Department for server related problems. It also handles up to 100 domains (sites). The "Web Trends Intelligence Suite" is their top of the line product (pricing varies depending on bundled services) geared for enterprise customers. This includes integration and training services for integrating the application with Online Analysts Processing Tools ("OLAP," yes, another E-biz acronym) or other types of reporting tools.

We've been using and recommending Web Trends to clients for years primarily because of its interface and functionality. It's a browser-enabled app, meaning anyone with a browser (IE or Netscape) can view reports and data. The reports are presented in a straightforward manner that includes basic pie chart or bar types of graphics. You can easily tell at a glance what your visitor traffic was for a given period, where they came from, what pages they visited and how long they stayed on specific pages. You don't need to be a technologist or a marketing geek to use this application (see below for practical tips).

Practical Usage

So what do you want to measure? What type of custom reports do you want to run once you get the software installed? You will want to measure how much traffic (visitors) is coming to your Web site per day, week, or month. Where they are coming from (country of origin), and where visitors going on your Web site? Places such as your home page, internal pages and of these what specific pages; i.e. "About Us," "Products," "Services," your "Shopping Cart," etc.

Pay careful attention to usage times, how long people are staying on specific pages; too long may indicate they can't figure out your content, or your content is so good it's meaningful and educational. For example, if your "White Paper Resource" section is the most frequently visited and the visitor sessions (time elements) are long (2-4 minutes) then this means your content is being well received. But, if everyone is just reading your White Papers but not filling out your response forms, then you may need to alter some aspects of your business processes and how you communicate them via your Web site.

Web Trends compliments ongoing advertising campaigns and processes---it lets you capture critical ROI ("Return on Investment") information by giving you an accurate picture of traffic and usage patterns that should correlate with what your ad agency or marketing partner is telling you or confirming with their own reports. For example: If your deploying an opt-in e-mail campaign and bringing people to a specific "landing page" (specific page where people are directed to that may include an "offer"). You need to carefully monitor if people are clicking through to the page and how long they are staying and/or going to your shopping cart to purchase a product or a registration fulfillment page. If the session times (how long they stay on a page) are short and people aren't filling out a form or converting (purchasing or taking a specific action) then you clearly have some work to do on your Web site content or business processes.