When the subject of web analytics comes up, some people run for the hills. I completely understand why. There is a whole lot of number crunching and “figgering” going on that many people want to get away from it as quickly as possible. What if I told you it doesn’t have to be complicated and difficult to understand?
Analyzing web traffic can be one of the most important parts of a web marketing strategy, yet it is often the most neglected. In order to help you better understand the power of web analytics, my next three posts will describe and highlight the different sections of Google Analytics. I chose their analytics platform because it is very powerful and offers great reports ranging from the high overview to the minute detail. It’s also free and quite easy to set up.
If you don’t have analytics set up on your web site, now is the time to get it going. Rather than rehash the subject, I point you to the Google Analytics web site which details set up and installation in 10 easy steps: http://www.google.com/support/analytics/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=66983.
My next three posts will cover the three main sections of Google Analytics reports: Visitors, Traffic Sources and Content.
At this point I plan to cover those sections rather broadly, but I want to answer any questions you may have about analytics. Please feel free to leave a question in the comments and I’ll try to incorporate them into the posts as I go along.
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Hi
Why is the average use time on websites about 3 minutes? Shouldn’t it be much less in reality?
Many users leave browser sessions open in different tabs for hours…
Thanks for posting your question. I’ll have to look into this. I’ve not considered average time on site in this way before.
Hi there. Please accept my apologies for not responding earlier to your question.
Users leaving browser windows open for lengthy periods of time in itself does not cause your time on site statistics to increase. This is because the web is a “stateless” medium. There is no actual continued “connection” between the browser and the web server as there is in a client/server setup. Here’s how it works in a nutshell:
1. Your visitor opens a web browser and types in the URL for your web site.
2. The browser sends a request for your home page.
3. The server sends the home page HTML code.
4. The browser on the other end takes the code and renders the home page for the visitor.
That’s where the connection ends. All contact between the server and the visitor’s computer is severed unless the visitor clicks on a link, then the process begins all over again for the page the visitor requests.
As the analytics software processes the server’s web logs it looks for patterns in requests from individual IP Addresses or cookie values. If a user clicks on a link at least once within 20-30 minutes (depending on how the software is set) the analytics considers the visitor to have an active “session.” Once there are no clicks for that time, the “session” is considered abandoned, then the software calculates the time the visitor was on site.
As I understand things – and believe me I am a mere beginner at the math to all this – the time on site is a pretty good estimate, but an estimate nonetheless. I might be wrong on this point, so if you hear different please let me know.
So, in your scenario, leaving the browser open for hours will not result in longer time on site statistics unless there is some clicking going on.
If I were to put these analytics onto my website, what purpose would it serve to help me know how my website is functioning for the viewing public? How could this information benefit my future enhancements and how to know what kind of enhancements to make?
guenevere
Good question. Thanks for dropping in. I’ll look to answer that one in my next post on the subject.
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