On-site maintenance

Picture the scene - a marketing manager spends tens of thousands onw how people use it and what's happening on it? If not, you're wasting your Web investment, says Graham Peachey. planning and executing a high-profile integrated campaign and then ...

does nothing. No reports on its success or failure, its visibility, its effect on company identity, or the demographics of the audience reached.

Sounds incredible? Well, when it comes to Web sites, this scenario is played out time and again, with no knowledge of how the site is used by visitors, or if those visitors ever return.

Simply put, the more you know about the strengths and weaknesses of your site, the better it becomes. Just about every site has its 'hit counter', recording the number of visits - but just because people hit the site doesn't mean that they will stay there, or absorb any of the messages that you are trying to convey. To make the most of your company's Web presence, and to justify investment in the Web site, it's necessary to dig deeper.

With in-depth analysis of the traffic across the site, you can track usage and generate explicit reports on how the site is being used by its visitors. Understanding all of the different aspects of a Web visitor's experience is critical to the effectiveness of a site, and in ensuring that the goals of the Web site are met. There are many parameters which govern the effectiveness and performance of a Web site such as:

- hits on each page

- how many individuals have visited a site

- average visit time per page

- whether site changes increase or decrease traffic

- which advertising vehicles are most effective for a site

- busiest times for a site

- load and performance statistics

- the path that visitors take through a site

- users' Internet addresses, and the browser they use

- how long it takes visitors to access specific pages

Putting this information to good use is easy. For example, a common path taken by visitors through a site is from the home page to the general product information page, to an individual product's page. This can take four or five clicks on some sites, and only one or two on others: with real and obvious implications for the number of times people will revisit the site. By making it easier for people to get the information they need, you encourage revisits.

Another example of how analysis can deliver benefits is in capturing visitors' Internet addresses as they visit. With these addresses, you can build a database of visitors, helping you to know your Web audience better. So far so good, but how do you go about gathering this data and turning it to your advantage? Let's look at some of the IT issues that need to be addressed.

Harvesting the data

Some of the information outlined here can be gleaned from the Web host server's access logs. However, these logs were not designed with in-depth site analysis in mind, and cannot easily be tweaked to produce the kind of information desirable from a management perspective. When a Web site is accessed most servers will record only the visitor's Internet address, date and time of the visit and the size of the item requested. What's more, if information isn't recorded in the log files - as sometimes happens - then there's no record of visitors at all. Even if a record exists, it can be misleading. Distortions can occur because of the way IP addressing works. Many Internet service providers employ dynamic IP addressing, so a user may come from different addresses on consecutive days.

Proxy servers will also distort the record. All Internet requests from inside a security firewall must first go through the proxy server. In large companies, hundreds of PCs may make requests to a site, but only the hostname of the proxy server will appear in the log. Also, frequently-requested documents are stored locally on the proxy machine, so the visit isn't logged.

Tracking down visitors

Difficulties also arise in attempting to track users as they move through a site. Each HTML page requested is logged by the server independently, without describing how one is related to another. If traffic is high, it's unlikely that individual requests will be recorded sequentially in the log file. One answer is Netscape's 'cookies'. These are identifiers that Netscape browsers use to store information about a user's interaction with a site over multiple requests. However, cookies are mainly used for marketplace interfaces where the user has a 'shopping bag' of goods, and are not supported on most Web servers.

The right tools for the job

If Web site analysis sounds fraught with difficulties, rest assured that there are software solutions available just for this purpose. These fall broadly into two camps: off-site and on-site analysis. The former, using products such as I/Pro, saves resources by eliminating the need for an on-site database, but is slow and can lack detail. On-site analysis, with products such as those from net.Genesis, provide data on demand and allows older information to be taken into account when looking for possible trends.

On-site analysis can also be faster, because third-party intervention in the process is eliminated and as many reports as required can be created at no extra cost.

Good analysis software will also package data in a variety of report formats, from raw statistics to 'presentation to the board' quality. You should be able to decide whether to provide basic figures for, say, departmental use, or coloured charts and tables for the MD.

Testing the waters

One key point is to ensure that your Web site is designed for analysis.

That is, it should have a logical structure which enables you to track visitors meaningfully and find what interests them, as they use your site.

So ensure that the site's content is grouped logically: it will make your analysis data richer and more useful. Of course, while analysis software can help you make the most of your Web site, it's helpful to be able to justify expenditure on the software itself. One way of doing this is to call in a specialist (such as Renaissance) that can analyse your Web site's log files for you, and provide you with reports on its usage on an as-needed basis.

But whichever path you choose, Web site analysis is now a key issue.

Where even a year ago, it was enough simply to be on the Web, now companies must justify their Web spend and obtain a return on that investment. Companies that analyse and quantify their Internet presence are the ones who stand a chance of returning a 'Net profit'.

Graham Peachey can be contacted at Renaissance on 01638 569700 or go to www.rvsl.com.

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