Examining Analytical Data

Wajahat karim

Posted Date: Wednesday, February 28, 2007 | Viewed: 268

Posted In Category: Article Directory > Computers and Internet > Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Articles

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There are two fundamental questions regarding web site design and functionality that every site designer needs to answer: Who is your target audience and what is it that you want them to do at your site? The answers to those two questions go a long way towards driving site design as they affect everything from the colors you choose, the kind of navigation you select, and the services that you offer. During the design process the savvy designer/developer keeps these questions firmly in mind as they make their decisions, making assumptions based on what they think people will do at the site.

But what happens after the site is launched? How do you know if you (or your clients) are accomplishing your goals? That mystery requires an analytical service that allows you to track your visitors to your site and what they're doing when they find you. And beyond simply tracking their basic behaviors, it's also incredibly useful to know the computer platform they're using, the browser version, the version of Flash they have installed, and much more. In fact, the more you can find out about your visitors the better off you'll be as you can make any number of inferences from those statistics.

In times past there were only two viable options available for web masters. You could depend on whatever analytic reporting was offered by your hosting service, or pay to have your site tracked by an outside service. (A third "solution"—free hit counters—rarely offered anything of value in terms of statistical analysis.) Now you have another choice. One that provides a phenomenal wealth of information about your site and best of all, it's completely free and is being offered by one of the most trusted names on the web—Google.

Google acquired the search service formerly known as Urchin in 2005, and until just recently Urchin services were only available to a limited few sites that passed Google's muster. While Urchin was being renamed to Google Analytics and the scalability of the service was being tested you were required to submit your site for approval for a free Analytics account and then wait a bit while your site was evaluated. If you were lucky you received an OK letter from Google within a few weeks after which you could insert the little bit of code required to begin tracking visits to your site.

Now that the beta testing is complete Google is providing instant access to Analytics for the asking. All you'll need to do is head over to the Google Analytics home page, request an account, add a tiny chunk of JavaScript to the pages you want to track, then begin tracking your sites. The biggest problem you may face is tearing yourself away from the statistics that Google provides as you'll likely be as amazed as I have been in just how much you can uncover through the simple process of adding just a tiny bit of code to your pages.

In these articles you'll be given a peak behind the curtain at two of the sites that I maintain. One, my personal blog, attracts a far different audience than the school district web site that I maintain. Along the way you'll learn a few practical tips about employing Google Analytics, how to find and interpret the data you'll have access to, and the kinds of inferences you can make from your data.

In Part 1 of this series you saw just how easy it is to add the tracking code that Google uses to examine visitors to your site. With just a tiny bit of JavaScript inserted into your pages you can find out all sorts of things about your site visitors. What kinds of things? Well, read on and you can see for yourself just how rich and varied the data returned by Google Analytics can be. In this article you'll see how data is organized for your quick review and how you can drill down to get even more information. Be forewarned though. The kinds of data analysis you can do on a site can be somewhat addictive, and you may find yourself spending a considerable amount of time looking at all the information Google Analytics provides on your sites.

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Examining Analytical Data

Wajahat karim

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