Firespring Analytics

Transcription

1 Firespring Analytics

2 What do my website statistics mean? To answer this question, let's first consider how a web page is loaded. You've just typed in the address of a web page and hit go. Depending on your Internet access speed, the information you requested will instantly appear in your web browser on your computer. This seems so simple. But what happens behind the scenes to bring you all of this information? When you click on that button, your computer sends a request to the host server for the web page. That request includes several pieces of information about you as the visitor, including the IP address of your computer, also known as the host. Your computer also sends the operating system (Mac OS X, Windows XP, etc), the browser (Mozilla, Internet Explorer, Netscape) and the page requested ( Your request is fulfilled when the web server receives this information and returns the page to your browser. This transfer is known as a hit on the web server. However, one single hit may download only a portion of the page you requested. Usually one page that you see in your web browser is composed of many files. That initial hit would contain references to other files. These additional files can include images, navigational controls, graphics and other items shared by several other web pages within the site. Once the browser identifies the other file references, a new request is sent to the web server for the missing files. Each of those requests is also recorded as a web hit. One single web page is constructed at the web browser one piece at a time by making several hits to the web server. Hit counts can be large and may look impressive, but may not give you the most useful information. For instance, a company that has twelve photos on their front page will get more hits than a company with one photo even if the same number of visitors comes to the respective sites. Each photo would require a server request or a hit. The server records each computer address and the time interval between web hits to determine a single website visitor. This gives a clearer picture of exactly how many visitors actually view your site. Each host computer address is treated as a unique visitor. A customer that visits your site in the morning and then later on in the day, on the same computer, will be recorded as two separate visits, but not two unique visitors. This can give you more accurate information as to the impact your site is having on your customers. We capture this information and display it all for you in an easy to view layout. A Firespring Analytics report on your website s activity is available in your Springboard > Monitor Activity > Statistics.

3 All analytics software is packed full of terms you may be unfamiliar with. Many of the terms are standard in the web industry, but not everyone is an expert, so we thought a centralized list would be helpful! This document is rather long and detailed, but if you want to know what everything means, how we calculate values like unique visitors or bounce rate, and get a better understanding of how Firespring Analytics works in general, we recommend reading it all. The Home page gives you a Dashboard view of information. Each section of the dashboard gives you links to click on to see targeted summary information. The Basics: This section of the dashboard shows you the numbers that are likely to be of most interest to you. You ll see columns of +/- percentages throughout the analytics screens. These figures represent the percentage of increase or decrease of a particular statistic compared to yesterday at this time. Visitors / Sessions When someone visits your website, your visitor count is incremented by one and a new visitor session is started. All actions taken beyond the first one are attached to that visitor session. Sessions expire after 30 minutes of inactivity. This means if the visitor leaves and comes back again a few hours later, or they remain on your website but don't do anything until at least 30 minutes later, your visitor count for the day will be increased again. Unique visitors Your unique visitor count will only be incremented when a visitor comes to your site for the first time that day. If they visit your site five times in one day, your normal visitor count will be incremented by 5, but your unique visitor count will only be incremented by 1. Firespring Analytics determines uniqueness by a visitor's IP address (see Organizations below for more info). Other services use cookies to try to track a unique visitor, but Firespring Analytics does not because of privacy concerns. o NOTE: The Daily Visitors section of the Dashboard displays an easy to view line graph and gives you options for comparing the Visitors information with other pieces of data, and displaying different time periods.

4 Actions Firespring Analytics tracks page views, file downloads, outgoing links and other types of clicks. We group all of these into a term we call actions. The actions count gives you a thorough, accurate picture of visitor activity. o NOTE: The Daily Actions section of the Dashboard displays an easy to view line graph and gives you options for comparing the Actions information with other pieces of data, and displaying different time periods. Total time spent This figure represents how much cumulative time was spent on your website across all visitors for the day. If your site gets a decent amount of traffic, this value is typically much larger than 1 day. Average time/visit The average amount of time spent on your website, per visitor. Bounce rate A visitor bounces from your site if they only view one page and do nothing else. The bounce rate is the percentage of your visitors who bounced, so a lower value is better. We only calculate and store a global bounce rate for your entire site. You can see the bounce rate for different segments of your visitors by going to your visitors page and applying filters. Applying a traffic source filter of links or searches will show you some data for all of the visitors who arrived at your site via a link or search, including the bounce rate. Traffic sources: This section of the Dashboard gives you a general break down of how visitors are arriving at your site, which we calculate by analyzing a visitor's referrer data (see Referrers below for more info). There are six categories: Direct / Bookmark - How many visitors arrived at your site with an empty referrer string. This usually means they typed in your address by hand (direct) or used a bookmark to get to your page. Links This shows how many visitors arrived via a link from another website, excluding search engines. Click on Links from the dashboard to see the visitor information. A breakdown of Links is visible in its own Dashboard section below Traffic Sources.

5 Click the Links tab at the top of the page to see the following information: o Incoming: A link on an external website that sent a visitor to your site. Firespring Analytics automatically tracks clicks on these links so you can see how your visitors are arriving your website and where you are receiving the most traffic from. When a visitor arrives via an incoming link, that action will show up in their visitor session, and the total value for clicks on that link will be incremented by 1. o Domains: The domains where the incoming links are hosted. o Outgoing: An outgoing link is a link on your website that points to another external website. Firespring Analytics automatically tracks clicks on these links so you can see how your visitors are leaving your website and where you are sending the most traffic to. When a visitor clicks an outgoing link, that action will show up in their visitor session, and the total value for clicks on that link will be incremented by 1. o Recent: Incoming links that have sent a visitor to your site today o Unique: The first time any particular link has sent a visitor to your site (since you have had Firespring Analytics), it will show up here along with the time it occurred Searches - How many visitors arrived by an external search engine. Click on Searches from the dashboard to see the visitor information. You ll see the text and phrases they are using that have taken them to your site. You can use this information to enhance the SEO aspect of your site and capture more search engine traffic. A breakdown of Searches is visible in its own Dashboard section below Links or by clicking the Searches tab at the top of the page. Also, see Recent Searches and Newest Unique Searches below for more information. Advertising - How many visitors arrived via advertisements you may be running. We determine this by looking at the domain of the referrer. If it is a major known advertising domain, or the domain matches certain patterns such as ad, ads, or pagead, then we put the visitor in this category. - How many visitors arrived via ? Only web mail is supported, however, because clicking on a link from within a program like Outlook will not send any referrer data to your site. Social media - How many visitors arrived via popular social media sites? Supported sites are: twitter, pownce, youtube, myspace, facebook, orkut, digg, reddit, propeller, sphinn, mixx, newsvine, sk-rt, shoutwire, stumbleupon, popurls, fark, metafilter, techmeme, ma.gnolia, flickr, yahoo buzz, del.icio.us, furl, blinklist, dzone, hyves, nujij, ekudos, reporter.msn, and grubb.

6 NOTE: If one or more of the categories listed above does not appear in the Traffic sources dashboard, that means there is currently no activity to report coming from that source. Referrers: When you look at a web page, your web browser sends a whole bunch of data to that page, including something called the referrer. The referrer indicates what page (if any) referred you to the current page. For example, if you search for something on Google, and then click on one of the results, your web browser will use the URL of the Google search page as the referrer. This is how Firespring Analytics is able to determine what searches and other pages lead visitors to your website, because our tracking code can access this referrer data. Any time you click a link on a web page, your browser sends the referrer data to the next page you end up on, even if it's on the same website. Firespring Analytics ignores the internal referrers, however and provides you with the external, more valuable data. Locale: Click the Locale tab for a look at maps that show the geographic location of your visitors. Hostnames: A visitor's hostname is what their IP address resolves to for a lookup. For example, one of Google's IP addresses is If a visitor with this IP address came to your website, then their hostname would be displayed as google.com. Please see Organizations for more information about this (it works the same way). Organizations: A visitor's organization (and hostname) is determined by looking up their IP address in a third party database. It is not 100% accurate, but close to it. These values represent the company that owns that IP address. For example, if someone from Microsoft corporate headquarters visited your site, you would see Microsoft as their organization. Of course, many home users can't be identified by anything more accurate than their ISP, which is not quite as useful.

7 Content: This section of the Dashboard shows you at a glance the content that your visitors are looking at on your website. Click on the Content tab at the top of the screen to see details of the following: Pages: See the pages your customers are viewing, ranked in order of popularity, based on hits. Click on the Content tab at the top of the screen to view the breakdown of Page views into Entrance and Exit. You can also click on the cloud icon to view the results in a Tag Cloud (see below for more information). o Entrance page: Sometimes called a landing page, is the page that a new visitor session starts on. If a visitor comes to your site directly, that will typically be your front page, but visitors coming to your site via searches or other external links will probably be landing on other pages initially. The entrance pages section shows which pages are the most popular first pages that people see. o Exit page: Likewise, an exit page is the last page that a user sees before leaving your website. Downloads: Firespring Analytics automatically tracks clicks on any links that point to a file on your website. Among the supported file extensions are: avi, csv, doc, exe, gif, jpeg, mp3, mp4, mpeg, mov, pdf, png, ppt, rar, sit, txt, wma, wmv, xls, xml, and zip. When a visitor clicks a download, that action will show up in their visitor session, and the total value for downloads of that file will be incremented by 1.

8 Recent links: These are logs of all incoming links that have sent a visitor to your site today, in reverse chronological order. Click on the Links tab at the top of the screen to view the Recent links along with a breakdown of links into Incoming, Domains and Outgoing. You can also click on the cloud icon to view the results in a Tag Cloud (see below for more information). Newest unique u links: The first time any particular link has sent a visitor to your site (since you have installed Firespring Analytics), it will show up in these logs along with the time it occurred. Items are displayed in reverse chronological order. Recent searches: These are logs of all searches that have sent a visitor to your site today, in reverse chronological order. Click on the Searches tab at the top of the screen to view the Recent search terms along with a breakdown of Keywords and Engines used. You can also click on the cloud icon to view the results in a Tag Cloud (see below for more information). You can use this information to enhance the SEO aspect of your site and capture more search engine traffic. Newest unique searches: The first time any particular search term has sent a visitor to your site (since you have installed Firespring Analytics), it will show up in these logs along with the time it occurred. Items are displayed in reverse chronological order. Tag clouds: All popular data (searches, downloads, etc) defaults to being sorted from most popular to least popular, with a simple HTML bar graph on the side to visually

9 represent the how popular each item is relative to the others. Firespring Analytics also offers the ability to view this data as a tag cloud, which you can enable/disable on the fly by clicking the cloud icon on any page that it is available. A tag cloud is a popular Web 2.0 feature, and generally shows you some form of popular data in a random 2-dimensional order, with the size and color of each item representing its popularity. The bolder and larger the font size, the more popular the item. Tag clouds give you a new view on your data, and help showcase long tail (low or non-hit) items because they are intermixed with the most popular ones. Spy: Click the Spy tab and you will see the same data you see on the main Actions list page, except that everything is live! You will see page views, downloads, outgoing links and clicks stream down the spy page as they are happening on your website. Click on the link to see more information about an individual Visitor s session RSS: RSS is short for Really Simple Syndication, and is a way to easily extract chronological data from one website and display it on another. For example, most blogs have an RSS feed, which contains a list of recent stories, ordered from newest to oldest. Firespring Analytics offers a few RSS feeds for chronological data from your website's traffic, such as recent visitors, recent incoming links and recent searches. Upon request, you will be able to access the various feeds by clicking the RSS icon in the Firespring Analytics navigation bar at the top of your stats pages. You can use the RSS feeds to display this data on your iphone for example, you can put them in an RSS reader such as NetVibes or Google Reader. Contact Firespring Support Services to request the RSS link.