Explain the metrics for web analytics.

Explain the application of the following web-metrics: a) page views b) bounce rate c)average session duration d) exit rate e) unique visitors

What is a “metric” in Google Analytics?The numbers in a data set often paired with dimensionsA segment of data separated out in a report for comparisonA dimension that can help analyze site performanceThe dates in a date range

Section 1How Analytics WorksThe purpose of web analytics is to provide information about the traffic on a website or web application. This information, if analyzed properly, can provide insights about the best traffic sources, content changes that will improve conversion, and methods to increase transaction size. Dozens of web analytics packages exist and they differ in myriad technicalities, but they all must accomplish two objectives. They must (1) gather data about the traffic on a website or application and (2) provide summary reports of this data.Gathering DataBefore a web analytics package can gather data about your web traffic, it needs to be granted access to this data. This access is typically given by installing a few lines of code on each page of the website. While the main code of a website or application enables information to be passed between a user’s computer and a server (i.e., page requests and page content), the analytics code passes traffic information to the analytics package servers (see Figure 3.1.1).Figure 3.1.1Those servers store this raw traffic data to enable the user to create summary reports on this data. At its most basic level, the raw traffic data might look something like this:Figure 3.1.2This data includes information about which webpage was requested when and from what location (the IP address is used to estimate the requesting computer’s location). Raw information about server requests will not be useful to a webmaster unless that information can be aggregated and organized in a way that enables the webmaster to make inferences about the nature of the traffic on his site. In addition to recording the server request, the analytics package will provide several key pieces of supplemental information about that request.Supplemental InformationIdentity of Requester. Analytics does not know the actual identity of the user (for example, it does not know your name or address), but it needs to know which page requests came from the same person so it can group page requests that came from the same session. (A session on a website can consist of multiple pageviews, and if the analytics package could not identify the user, it would not be able to match multiple pageviews from the same computer.) Analytics can identify the same user across multiple devices if the website has a log-in feature. This identifying information can be passed to Google Analytics, enabling Analytics to track the same user across all of his/her devices (but anonymized so as not to identify them personally). If the website does not have a log-in feature, Analytics will use a first-person cookie to group pageviews by device. (In this case, a user who accesses the website from his laptop and then from his mobile phone would be two different users in Analytics.)Timing of Request. Analytics would not know the order of pageviews within a session without knowing the time that each pageview occurred, so each server request is time-stamped. The timestamps enable the analytics package to calculate how long users are spending on each page.Navigation Source. It is fundamentally important to know how users are arriving at a website, whether through search engines, direct URL entry, links from other websites, ads, and so on. Analytics provides this information. For users coming to a site through paid ads, a company can make this data very specific, recording not just that the user came from an ad on yahoo.com, but recording which ad was the clicked ad (if, for example, the site was running multiple ads).Technical Information. A webmaster may wish to know if users on Safari versus Chrome behave differently, or if users on desktop computers behave differently than those on mobile devices. Analytics records technical information about each user, including the operating system, browser, screen size, and internet connection type.Geography. Though analytics does not know the address of users, it knows the general geography of each user, typically to the level of their zip code.Summarizing DataAny analytics package will allow a user to aggregate and organize the data in a variety of ways. For example, it might show aggregate statistics like the total number of sessions, the total revenue, and the total time on site. It can also break up the data to show the conversion rate of mobile users in Mobile, Alabama versus desktop users in the same city. It can also use the aggregate data to provide reports of various behaviors, like the percentage of visitors who move from the homepage to each category page (typically called a “traffic flow” report).A company can also customize the reports it sees on the homepage of its account. For example, a retail website’s owner may be most interested in seeing aggregate statistics on visitors, shopping cart additions, purchases, and revenue. The retailer can instruct the analytics package to make reports on those statistics available on the homepage for easy perusal at any time. A media website’s owner might be more interested in other statistics such as average number of pages viewed or average time on site. A website’s analytics are only as useful as the owner makes them. Making analytics useful requires an understanding of the various metrics analytics can provide. We discuss these in the next section.

Explain how to measure SEO efforts.

What is Google Analytics? Why should you use it?