Keeping Track Of Your Website Visitors
Keeping Track Of Your Website Visitors
Greetings everyone, welcome to another newsletter. Although why I still call them “Newsletters†is anyone’s guess, I think I’m going to have to rename them to “Mildly interesting postings from a bit of a geek that seem to arrive in your inbox every now and againâ€.
So with that in mind, welcome to my very first mildly interesting post….from a bit of a geek.
In this edition I’ll show you exactly how you can set up a detailed tracking system, without spending a single penny!
Your web host will no doubt already offer you a basic statistics package, this will show you the number of visitors, where they came from, what browser they were using and so on, but like dog with worms, we are hungry for MORE!
We need to know how long the visitor spent on our site, which pages they visited, which pages they left the site on, why did they leave the site, we can even find out the type of internet connection they used when they visited our website.
The reason we need this information, isn’t because we are being greedy, far from it. Let’s take the exit pages as an example. The screen shot below shows you the exit stats for this blog:
It might be a bit difficult for you to see, but it shows every page and the number of people that exited the site when they visited that page. Mine looks fairly normal, but let’s say that you have a page that has a very high exit rate. You can then look at that page in detail to try and find out why people are leaving it, you can then tweak the page until the exit rate goes down!
You can also see how many visitors are “Loyal†to your website. The stats will track a visitor and see if they have visited your site before, take a look at the loyalty stats for this blog, over a 1 month period:
You can see that 60% have only visited the blog once in the past month – shame on you! 😉
But the other 40% have visited the blog at least twice in the past month which for me is a good thing, if you keep coming back then I must be doing something right. As for the 64 people (3%) that visited the blog more than 200 times this month….I have the number of a good psychiatrist (try spelling that without a spell checker) that I can give to you 😉
Another cool thing I like to look at is the amount of time the visitor spends on the site. Another screen shot for you:
The average time people spend on this blog is currently 1 minute and 40 seconds. This is a very good sign, if people spend more than 10 seconds on your site then they must be interested in the content. If the average time people spend on your site is less than 10 seconds then you need to think about changing something!
Not only does it show me the average time you spend on the site, but it also breaks it down, day by day. On certain days, the average time jumps up to over 3 minutes. It’s no co-incidence that these days are when I make a new “Mildly interesting postâ€, not only does it show me that you are clicking on the link to view the latest post, it also shows that you are actually reading them!
I’ve just reached a full page in my word processor, and I’ haven’t even told you what stats package I’m talking about, and I haven’t shown you how to install it yet. I’m going to jump into that now, I could keep going on about the hundreds of cool features but I’d still be here this time next week.
So, What Is It?
Those of you with eyes will have already seen the name on the screen shots – “Google Analyticsâ€.
You can sign up for Google Analytics (it’s free) at the link below:
http://www.google.com/analytics
When you sign up, the first thing you need to do is set up a new website profile. Click on the “Create new profile†button and it will ask you for details of your site, fill out the form and you will be done in no time.
All you need to do then is copy/paste the tracking code onto the pages you wish google to track for you. If you are using a WordPress blog like this one, you just need to insert the tracking code in either the header, or the footer file and it will track every page of your blog.
When you have inserted the code, your stats will be updated by Google every 24 hours, and that’s it – easy as pie!
However…..Google Analytics also let’s you track e-commerce transactions, this let’s you follow the website visitor all the way through your website order process from start, to finish. Analytics can even record the sale data, this can then produce a wide variety of reports including the conversion rate of your site, the amount of $$$ you are earning per visitor and much more.
This is slightly more tricky to set up, but I would be happy to put together a step by step guide if any of you would be interested? Let me know by posting a comment, if enough of you are interested I’ll make it into another “Mildly interesting postâ€!
Thanks for reading, 🙂
Dan
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Good Morning, Dan…good newsletter. I, for one, would be interested in a step-by-step guide on how to install Google Analytics for various statistical reasons on different pages.
YOU might be “somewhat of a geek,” but I am definitely not anywhere close. So, I think your guide would be VERY interesting…that’s a couple of steps above “mildly interesting,” don’t you think?
Pat Graham
ghost-writer@charter.net
Hi Dan,
Thanks for another informative post. I have been using Google Analytics for a while but only to track visitors. I’ve not experimented with it at all and didn’t know you could generate all these useful reports. Just had a look at the “Site Overlay” report. That’s a pretty interesting one.
For anyone using WordPress I recommend the TanTanNoodles plugin. It automatically installs Google Analytics on your blog for you.
Keep up the good work Dan,
Tom Parker
Hi Dan,
Thanks for another informative post. I would like know more about tracking the visitors and to gain track of those report. You have been posting great posts.
Thanks and keep up great work.
Interesting & informative, Dan,
As usual.
And, thank you, Mr. Parker, for the TanTanNoodles reference.
Dan, I hope you get enough interest comments to justify the proposed post on tracking transactions. That would, indeed, be interesting.
Today, though, I’ve a bit different question for ya. While I read almost every post you publish, I seldom visit your blog … usually, only if I want to respond to a post. I’m reading your RSS feed. I’m using Gmail and the Google Reader aggregator, so I don’t imagine it would be all that difficult for Google to track the fact that I review your blog daily.
However, it is not clear to me whether _any_ analytics program tracks RSS feed activities. None that I’ve examined do. ‘Twould seem to me, especially with all the encouragement to subscribe to RSS feeds from many Web sites, that such tracking would be important. After all, if 40% of your blog readership is using RSS to read your posts, that’d be a pretty hefty hole in the analyses, doncha thimk?
Make a good day …
… barn
Hi Dan,
Great stuff. I am just now getting set up to use GA, so a step by step would be great.
Thanks,
John
If anyone is installing it on a blog, there’s a great Word Press plugin that you can use here
http://www.joostdevalk.nl/wordpress/google-analytics/
Paula Brett
http://www.PaulaBrettBlog.com
Great post Dan, and YES, PLEASE, do show us how to do more indepth tracking!
I’m in the midst of setting a couple sites up, and I was trying to determine what I wanted to do about tracking. THANKS for pointing out the obvious, as I think sometimes we get so busy, we don’t see what’s right in front of us. 😉
Olaina
Thanks for the comments everyone.
I’m going to be setting up conversion and goal tracking for D9 Hosting soon, so I’ll kill 2 birds with one stone and do an article about it at the same time!
That’s a good point Barney, I can honestly say that I never thought of that. Off the top of my head I don’t think I’ve come across a stats prog that tracks the RSS feeds :-/
Hi Dan,
Great and “Interesting” post, opened my eyes. I looked at GA and missed the point, (read: confused old fart) thank you for making that point, today I will sort that out.
Therefore: I would welcome your step by step guide to the more advanced stuff
Yes, the step by step guide would be good, please. It is always refreshing to read blogs at sites like yours, keep it going!
Hi there Dan, another great post, thanks it was really informative as well as very funny (3% who need help!).
I would love a step by step for GA as I am new to all of this. Thanks again and keep up the great work.
Rachel.
Thanks for the post. Ive ony heard about Google Analytics before, but never had someone expound on what I’m missing. This is, as always, an interesting and useful post. Thanks!
Well Dan,
I have been a reader of your emails for quite some time and have never really taken advantage of your expertise. Oh I did buy an entire ebook collection from you and a website some years back but I lost it all in a HP meltdown recently which took every bit of info I had ever collected. No matter really because I never did learn how to upload one ebook to sell on line or on ebay after unzipping them. Any little info you would care to share about that subject for us un geek blessed people would be useful. I do have a domain name and that’s a start, lol.
The GA will be a great for when I eventually learn how to use all the info I do get from you.
I’d like to say, Dan, that the reason I have never opted out of your emails for a few years now is mainly because I found you to be not only interesting and helpful but honestly so. I’m glad I opened your blog and will try and remember to check back often.
Thanks a lot,
Harold Cooper
Arizona, USA
Thanks for all your comments, you’ll be pleased to know I plan on sending you the next edition of this post – How to use Google Analytics for eCommerce sites in the coming days. (Just a case of fitting it in between everything else!)
@ Harold – My business partner Paula Brett wrote a free tutorial showing you how to upload content to your website:
http://d9hosting.com/clients/dl.php?type=d&id=5
an,
I already have Google analytics configured on my Websites. I read this anyway, even picking up one new tip makes it worth the time.
Thanks
Sorry, it looks like I missed the”D” in Dan.
Great post Dan about setting up Google Analytics, now I just need to go and do it :-)))
Chris
http://www.estuff4all.com
http://www.dropshippingandebay.co.uk
Dan,
Thanks for this info..I was just wondering what to use.
A step by step guide would be so great for Google Analytics. Thanks, eve