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Posts Tagged ‘inexpensive tools’

Analyzing Traffic Sources: Where are your visitors coming from?

January 10th, 2009
2 comments

In my post, A Model to Improve Traffic Conversion, I refer to four questions that must be answered to effectively recommend and prioritize changes that improve conversion rates. In this post, I go into depth about how to analyze your traffic sources.

Model Attributes

Dimension: Source
Question: Where did they come from?
Type of Data: Quantitative
Intent or Result: Intent

Why It’s Important

Collecting data for basic web analytics like referrers or sources provides visibility into how a visitor came upon your site.  While this is a key metric, it does not offer any insight into the effectiveness of those sources.

For example, say you’re a mortgage broker using PPC as your primary marketing effort and banner advertising as your secondary.  80% of your monthly budget is allocated to PPC while only 20% is allocated to banner ads - and your traffic shows it.  10,000 visits a month to your site as a result of the PPC campaigns, but only 200 from your banner ads.  If you stopped your analysis there, your takeaway would be that your PPC campaigns were performing well and meeting your goals.

However, let’s look further.  You’ve established a primary goal - completion of a form to contact you for more information.  A total of 100 visitors complete the form - 10 from your PPC campaigns and 90 from your banner ads.  It’s a completely different picture.  A picture that may lead you to shift more of your budget to banner ads!

Remember… It’s not enough to know how they are getting to your site.  Instead,  it is an important dimension to track as part of the 360 degree view of your visitors.

Web Analytics

From Wikipedia:

Web analytics is the measurement, collection, analysis and reporting of internet data for purposes of understanding and optimizing web site usage.

Several free and inexpensive tools are available and are listed at the end of the post.

Web analytics provides the quantitative data you need to understand where your users are coming from.

Standardized Web Analytics Definitions

I always favor standardization.  The Web Analytics Association released a draft on  Web Analytics Definitions for public comment.  The following is a summary of the WAA  standardized definitions as they relate to this post.

Referrer

Referrer is a generic term that describes the source of traffic to a page or visit and are often collected into meaningful groups to facilitate analysis.

Groups often encountered are:

  • Internal ReferrerThe internal referrer is a page URL that is internal to the web site or a web-property within the web site as defined by the user. Not all tools report internalreferrers as a group.
  • External ReferrerThe external referrer is a page URL where the traffic is external or outside of the web site or a web-property defined by the user.
  • Search ReferrerThe search referrer is an internal or external referrer for which the URL has been generated by a search function. Many tools segment and report on search referrers as a group; however the exact definitions vary from tool to tool. Most will include the “big” search engines, such as Yahoo, Google, and MSN/Live. However, they vary in whether or not they exclude mail servers from these sources, or whether they use wildcards to capture any URL containing the word “search.”
  • Direct Navigation (aka No Referrer)The referrer value is empty or null. An empty referral string is often assumed to indicate that the user either directly entered the URL or selected from a list of bookmarks, but this is not always the case. Some user agents such as email clients, news readers, ad servers, and others may not set the referrervalue in the request header and thus the referrer is unknown.
Page Referrer

Describes the source of traffic to a page.

Session Referrer

The first page referrer in a visit.

Visitor Referrer

The first page referrer in a visitor’s first session.

Appending Information to URLs to Determine Source

Most web analytic solutions provide the ability to define custom variables like campaign, channel and a pre-defined source.  By appending information to URLs that drive traffic to your site (like on web pages, emails, tweets) you can more easily group data to determine campaign effectiveness.

Summary

Understanding your traffic sources is important in determining the effectiveness of your online campaigns.  Keep in mind, however, that this is just one piece of the puzzle.  Check back this week for upcoming posts to answer the remainder questions:

  • Why did they come? (motivation)
  • What did they do? (activity)
  • What did they think? (perception)
Web Analytics Solutions

I’ve listed a few web analytics solutions below.  It’s not an all-inclusive list so please feel free to comment about others.

Free or Free Trial
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Using Click Heatmaps to Optimize Web Design

January 4th, 2009
10 comments

Heatmaps provide valuable information to help iterate your web design and optimize a user’s propensity to respond to a desired call-to-action.  There are several free and inexpensive tools available to enable heatmaps on your site.  But first, let’s look at how and why you should use heatmaps.

How Heatmaps Work

To generate a heatmap, a script must be installed on each page you want tracked.  In web analytics terminology, this method is referred to as “page tagging”.  In addition to other web analytics data (page views, links, referrers, etc), the script collects X and Y coordinates each time a user clicks.  A heat map program then aggregates the data from all users and displays clicks through an overlay on each studied page.  A legend (typically visualized as a spectrum) is included to show the ”hot” (and cold) areas of a page.

Heatmap Variations

Eye Tracking

Being able to track a user’s eye movement is very valuable as it provides insight into how the user is processes information.  However, collecting this information requires a recruited participant, a lab environment, special software and a test faciliator.  While useful,  the ability to aggregate data consistently from users who are self-motivated to perform a test in large numbers is very expensive.

Vertical Scrolling

ClickTale provides a heat map of how far down a user scrolls down the page.  I don’t find this information terribly enlightening, but there is value in understanding how much content a user will consume.

Total Mouse Tracking

This is my personal preference.  Total mouse tracking collects not only mouse clicks, but mouse movement and activity as well. By studying the heat map of aggregate mouse paths and clicks, one can determine if or where users are having trouble.

Why You Should Use Click Heatmaps

Your website has a at least one goal - whether it’s to communicate information, get users to register or get users to purchase a product.  Each page on your website contributes to users achieving that goal.  By using heatmaps, you can optimize a user’s propensity to reach the goal(s) you have for your website.

Embedding calls-to-action, say a register button, is one way to help your users acheive the goal of registering on your site.  Heatmaps provide visibility to competing calls-to-action or confusing page elements which detract from users completing your site’s goals.  By increasing the size or position of the call-to-action, or by removing or reducing the attractiveness of competing actions, one can improve your site’s conversion rates.

Sample Heatmap

Free and Inexpensive Heatmap Solutions

I’ve compiled a list of heatmap solutions that are either completely free or are inexpensive with a free trial.  I highly recommend testing one out to see for yourself how heatmaps can work for you.

ClickHeat

This solution is free free free.  However, you must have access to your servers to install it.  I personally use ClickHeat for both by own site and my clients’ and have included mods for Total Mouse Tracking.  I’m aware of a report that the installed code may include cloaked links which google’s search engine frown upon.  Whileve I’ve not personally experienced this, it should serve as a warning before installing the software.

Click Density

Click Density is very easy to implement and works well as an excellent alternative to google analytics for an SMB web analytics solution.  A free 30 day trial is available.

Crazy Egg

This is another software as a service provider and their solution is also very easy to implement.  The user interface for the dashboard rocks and they have a Confetti feature that you have to check out!

FuseStats

I have not implemented FuseStats, but they seem to have a solid product.

The Definitive Heatmap by Corunet

Note: The installation instructions aren’t well documented.

ClickTale

ClickTale’s forté is in recording visitor sessions and provide the vertical scrolling heatmap discussed above.

VisiStat (added 01.09.08)

Didn’t realize these guys had heat maps.  I’d certainly give this one a try.

Chalkmark

I also want to highlight a solution that combines heatmaps with surveys.  This solution allows you to upload screenshots and ask questions to users visiting your online prototype.  Clicks are recorded and heatmaps are generated.  No code implementation required - just upload screenshots, ask questions and send to your participant list.

Feng Gui

The heatmap generated from Feng Gui isn’t actual, but inferred.  It basically uses artificial intelligence to simulates human vision during the first 5 seconds of exposure to visuals.  No implementation is required and it’s free!

Final Note

There are several heat maps solutions available to help optimize your site.  Feel free to contact me at lana@obzervant.com if you need help or advice on the best tool for your specific needs.

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