Number
Crunching
Getting a handle on your Internet Marketing Program
Never before
have marketers been so inundated with statistical data than
with the emergence of the Internet for commercial use. Whether
you have an online store or not, the amount of data crossing
your desk can be overwhelming. It's important to understand
this data to properly assess it. Let's start with number of
site visitors...
Site
visitors are recorded by your hosting stat log whenever
someone comes to your site. It should trigger the start of a
new "session," a session that will not end until the
site visitor leaves your site. That will now count as one visitor
- assuming a few things:
- Your
statistics server is running properly and not "hung"
so that it could record the session properly.
- Your
site wasn't down at all - most sites have "outages"
of 10-30 minutes from time-to-time: just about the amount
of time it takes to restart a computer. This is "normal"
but it also affects the statistics because while the computer
is being restarted, the numbers are not being recorded.
- The statistics
server is part of your hosting plan and not a third-party
server where data has to be sent to another IP address to
be recorded. Typically these types of stats require JavaScript,
so a site visitor who has JavaScript or cookies turned off
will not be recorded.
- The site
visitor is not forced to unknowingly leave your site and return
- sometimes processing a form script can cause one session
to record as two when the visitor is sent to a different site
to process the form's script then back to the site. (A form
script is processed whenever someone completes an online form
at a site - the script then sends the data to the site owner
and then sends the visitor to a new page. Sometimes these
scripts do not reside on the same server as the Web site.)
- The stats
server is filtering out search engine robots. If they are
not filtering out the robots, then every time a search engine
robot visits the site, it could be recorded as a "visit."
Hardly a profitable one since robots don't shop.
- Your
are able to deduct viruses visiting the site. Often these
viruses attempting to attack a Web site will run the number
of sessions up giving a false number of actual visitors. Check
your errors log to see if a virus may have been trying to
attack.
It's important
to note, too, that a visitor will be counted again when they
return to the site. So, if a site receives 2,000 visitors in
one month, it does not necessarily mean that it has received
2,000 NEW visitors that month. Some stat programs will provide
UNIQUE visitor information, but you need to look at their definition
of "unique" - sometimes it's a URL captured within
a 24 hour period - that means the visitor will be counted again
when they visit 2 or 3 days later.
Hits:
Hopefully by now everyone understands that "hits"
are NOT the number of visitors that come to a Web site. Hits
are more important to the hosting company than it is to marketers.
A 'hit" is every time a request is sent to the server for
a file. A page with 2 graphic files on it will count as 3 "hits"
to the server as it requests the html file and each graphic
file. If you're not aware of this, already, Web pages are not
like word processing pages. The elements of the page are not
embedded into the page. Each element is assembled by the Web
browser based on the instructions given in the HTML file (Web
page).
Referring
URLs: This is a very important part of your Internet marketing
program. A referring URL is the Web site that sent the site
visitor to your site. A referring URL could be a search engine,
Email, or another Web site. It can even be your own Web site
whenever someone bookmarks it or has it stored in their computer's
cache. How a visitor gets to your site is an extremely important
part of the overall marketing equation, but even this has to
be taken with some grain of salt. If an Internet searcher clicks
on a link, which then directs them to another link and then
your page, the referring URL will be the last link that sent
them to the site. The stats have no way of recording prior links.
The dawn
of the Internet marketing age provides us with much more data
than any other marketing medium, but one must be cautioned that
the numbers are not always what they seem - nor are they necessarily
accurate. Careful consideration and an open discussion with
your webmaster should help you determine the overall accuracy
of your numbers. My advice is to look at your numbers in terms
of "trends" instead of accurate data.
Internet Marketing For Industry
Issue
7 Volume 1~January, 2005